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a    missionary's 
Return  to  Judaism 

The   Truth  About  the  Christian 
Missions   to  the  Jews 

BY 
SAMUEL  FREUDER 


NEW  YORK 

THE  SINAI  PUBLISHING  COMPANY 

1915 


Copyright,   1915,  by 
SAMUEL   FREUDER 


h>^' 


CONTENTS. 

Chapters.  Pages. 

Preface   5-6 

I.     In  Open  Meeting 7-15 

II.     Deposed  from  the  Christian  Ministry..  16-23 

III.  My  Early  Life 24-35 

IV.  My  Life  as  a  Convert 36-59 

V.     Missionary  Work  Among  Adults 60-85 

VI.    Missionary  Work  Among  Adults  (Cont.).  86-101 

VII.    Missionary  Work  Among  Children 102-113 

VIII.     The  Little  Saint 114-123 

IX.     The  Everlasting  Schnorker 123-130 

X.     A  Missionary  Freak 131-136 

XI.     The  Missionary  Shammos 137-149 

XII.     The  Marcher  to  Zion 150-163 

XIII.  A  Self-Styled  Ex-Kabbi 164-177 

XIV.  The  Church  and  the  Jew 178-186 

XV.    Anti-Missionary    Measures 187-193 

XVI.    An  Unfinished  Chapter 194-203 


l'^'?'^66€ 


PREFACE 

The  hope  of  doing  something  to  promote  the 
cause  of  truth  and  justice  has  been  my  inspiring 
motive  for  the  pul)lication  of  the  following  pages. 

I  wish  I  could  have  presented  the  facts  con- 
cerning the  men  and  methods  used  in  the  Chris- 
tian missions  to  the  Jews  without  referring  to 
my  own  life  as  a  convert.  But  since  the  testi- 
mony of  a  witness  who  hides  his  antecedents  is 
of  doubtful  value,  I  was  obliged  to  bare  my  life 
to  the  public  for  the  sake  of  making  my  testimony 
as  effective  as  possible. 

From  the  evidence  presented  it  will  be  seen 
that  the  mission  work  among  the  Jews  as  carried 
on  by  professional  converts  is  reeking  with 
insincerity  and  dishonesty,  and  is  not  deserving 
the  support  of  decent  Christian  men  and  women, 
who,  deceived  by  their  missionary  hirelings,  are 
led  to  believe  that  they  are  lielping  a  good  cause. 

I  would  like  to  emphasize  that  I  am  dealing 
only  with   professional   converts,  that  is,   those 


6  Preface 

who  are  engaged  in  the  business  of  turning  Jews 
into  Christians.  To  converts  who  live  in  private 
it  would  be  unjust  to  apply  some  of  the  harsh 
words  I  could  not  help  using  in  speaking  of  the 
missionary  fraternity. 

I  feel  very  grateful  to  all  who  have  shown  me 
kindness  while  preparing  these  pages,  and 
especially  to  the  following  gentlemen,  who  have 
aided  me  by  giving  me  some  of  their  time  and 
thought:  Mr.  I.  George  Dobsevage,  and  Mr. 
William  J.  Solomon,  both  of  New  York  City; 
Mr.  Simon  Miller  of  Philadelphia,  Pa.,  and 
Professor  Gotthard  Deutsch  of  Cincinnati,  Ohio. 

The  Author. 
Kew  York  City,  March  15th,  1915. 


A  Missionary's  Return 
to  Judaism 


CHAPTER    I 

'^'^IN  OPEN  MEETING^^ 

No  LONGER  able  to  resist  the  promptings  of  my 
better  self,  I  stood  up  in  the  historic  Park  Street 
Church  of  Boston — June  3,  1908 — and  "in  open 
meeting"  declared  my  return  to  the  Jewish  fold. 
It  was  the  supreme  moment  of  my  life.  It  was 
then  that  I  learned  what  it  means  to  be  inspired. 
The  experience  of  that  single  hour  compensated 
for  the  sorrows  and  miseries  of  many  years. 

During  the  singing  of  the  hymn  which  pre- 
ceded my  address  I  looked  at  the  professional 
converts  in  the  congregation — there  were  about 
twenty  of  them — and  they  appeared  to  me  as 
grasshoppers,    compared    with    the   intellectual 

7 


8  A  Missionary's  Return  to  Judaism 

and  moral  giants  of  the  true  Israel.  I  closed 
my  eyes,  and  there  rose  before  my  mind's  eye  a 
vast  multitude  of  Jewish  men  and  women  who 
had  given  up  their  lives  rather  than  deny 
their  faith.  In  my  imagination  I  saw  a  long- 
procession  of  these  noble  martyrs  file  through 
the  front  door  of  the  church  and  line  up  against 
the  wall,  while  a  very  old  man  took  a  seat  right 
in  front  of  me,  and  kept  gazing  at  me  with  a 
smile  of  forgiveness  and  welcome  in  his  glorified 
face.    It  was  my  father. 

A  full  and  substantially  correct  account  of 
that  meeting  appeared  in  the  Boston  Globe,  of 
June  4,  1908.  I  reproduce  the  report  herewith, 
headlines  and  all,  adding  onlv  a  few  footnotes 
by  way  of  correction  and  explanation. 

APOSTATE  JEW  TUENS  FRO]\I  ADOPTED  FAITH 

Invokes  Cuese  On  Himself  Should  He  Again  Preach  in 

Christian  Pulpit 

MESSIANIC    CONFERENCE    SHOCKED    BY    REV.    SjVMUEL    FREUDER'S 

OUTBURST 

"I  have  never  baptized  a  Jew.  From  this  day  forth  I 
will  never  baptize  a  Jew  or  anybody  el-^^p. 


^'In  Open  Meeting"  9 

"If  I  ever  preach  in  a  Christian  pulpit  again,  may  my 
right  hand  forget  its  cunning,  and  may  my  tongue  cleave 
to  the  roof  of  my  mouth." 

These  were  the  titterances  which  upset  the  equanimity 
of  the  Hebrew  Messianic  conference  in  Park  Street  church 
yesterday  afternoon,  shocked  every  member  and  visitor, 
turned  rejoicing  into  sorrow  and  consternation,  brought 
tears  and  choking  utterances  to  strong  men  and  womeji 
and  led  some  to  their  knees  in  prayer. 

The  startling  and  wholly  unexpected  words  came  from 
the  lips  of  Eabbi-Eev.  Samuel  F render,  credited  in  the 
American  church  almanac  of  190S  to  the  Episcopal  diocese 
of  New  York,  and  up  to  this  time  a  missionary  to  Jews  in 
Xew  York  City. 

A    NOTABLE    COAVERT 

He  was  born  of  Hebrew  parents  in  the  Jewish  faith,  was 
thoroughly  educated  in  rabbinical  lore — learning  to  speak 
and  write  nine  different  languagesi— and  served  in  Jewish 
synagogues  until  17  years  ago,  when  he  was  converted  to 
Christianity,  and  was  baptized  by     ...     .2 

Then  he  took  a  course  in  Christian  theology,  during 
which  he  was  a  most  ardent  and  conscientious  student, 
mastered  the  New  Testament  history  and  doctrines  very 
thoroughly,  and  became  an  enthusiastic  aj)Ostle  of  the 
Christian  evangel  among  the  people  of  his  own  race  and 
religion. 


iNine  laug'uages?  Xeiii!     Scarcely  three. 

2This  and  the  other  blank  spaces  in  the  report  contain 
the  names  of  professional  converts.  They  are  omitted  for 
reasons  given  at  the  beginning  of  Chapter  V. 


10        A  Missionary's  Return  to  Judaism 

Coming  to  Boston  he  became  acquainted  with  Dr.  Edward 
S,  Niles,  the  Newbury  Street  dentist,  whose  home  is  in 
Brookline,  and  who  for  years  has  been  a  leader  in  efforts 
to  Christianize  the  Jews.  Dr.  Niles  became  interested  in  Mr. 
Freuder,  and  knowing  his  talents  and  attainments,  recom- 
mended him  to  Rev.  Joshua  Coit,  then  secretary  of  the 
Massachusetts  home  missionary  society  of  the  Congrega- 
tional church,  suggesting  that  he  be  given  a  position  as 
missionary  among  the  Jews. 

DISCOURAGED   BY   FAILURE 

The  salary  of  such  a  place  had  been  but  $500,  but  Mr. 
Freuder  was  appointed  at  a  salary  of  $800,  and  went  to 
work.  This  he  continued  for  some  time  with  satisfaction 
to  the  society,  although  the  spiritual  results  were  not  such 
as  the  missionary  himself  had  expected.  Beside  this,  he 
was  troubled  over  the  fact  that  he  had  lost  standing  with 
Hebrews  of  the  Jewish  faith. 

He  became  discouraged,  and  finally  went  to  Dr.  Coit, 
relinquished  his  salary  and  resigned  his  position,  giving 
as  a  reason  that  he  had  not  been  able  to  reach  the  class 
of  Jews  which  he  wanted  to. 

For  a  while  he  entered  into  a  business  occupation,  but 
subsequently,  having  a  longing  to  again  engage  in  Chris- 
tian missionary  work,  he  was  appointed  to  the  Episcopal 
position  which  he  now  holds,  unless  his  action  of  yester- 
day results  in  his  withdrawal  or  dismissal.  He  has  also 
held  a  rectorship.s 

In  his  New  York  work  it  is  declared  that  he  has  been 


3Not  exactly.     I  was  only  what  is  called  a  supply,  the 
rector  having  resigned. 


"In  Open  Meeting''  11 

most  faithful  and  efficient,  his  generous  philanthropy, 
tactful  course,  engaging-  manners  and  Christian  zeal  com- 
bining not  onl3'  to  endear  him  to  many  friends  but  to  bring 
satisfactory^  results. 

Recently,  when  the  Boston  council  decided  to  hold  the 
"Third  Sabbatical  Hebrew-Messianic  conference" — the  term 
denoting  once  in  seven  years,  the  first  having  been  held 
here  in  1894  and  the  second  in  1901 — Dr.  Niles,  president 
of  the  council,  and  one  of  its  founders,  wrote  to  Mr, 
Freud  er,  inviting  him  to  be  one  of  the  speakers  and  re- 
questing him  to  choose  the  subject  of  his  address.  The 
title  which  he  selected  was  "Christ  in  the  Talmud,"  and 
he  was  assigned  to  deliver  it  at  yesterday  afternoon's  ses- 
sion. 

He  had  already  responded  with  appropriate  words  to 
the  greeting  of  welcome  by  Pres.  Niles  at  the  morning 
meeting  and  everyone  loolced  forward  with  pleasant  ex- 
pectancy for  his  formal  address.  They  were  astonished  at 
the   denouement,  however.4 

DENOUNCES    MISSIONS 

He   said   in  part : 

"I  do  not  believe  that  missions,  as  they  are  conducted, 
are  worth  anything.  I  take  a  broad  view,  and,  althougli 
what  I  am  to  say  may  not  be  welcome,  I  shall  speak  not  in 
a  spirit  of  criticism  but  in  a  spirit  of  amity, 

4 1  was,  much  to  my  dismay,  called  upon  to  respond  to 
the  address  of  welcome.  Had  1  attempted  to  say  then 
and  there  what  I  thought  of  the  missionary  business,  I 
should  have  been  silenced  in  short  order.  I  bided  my  time, 
therefore,  until  the  afternoon  session,  for  which  I  had 
been  assigned   a  place  on  the  printed  program.     Then   I 


12         A.  Missionary's  Return  to  Judaism 

'1  "The  criticism  against  missions  is  twofold :  First,  that 
those  in  the  worlc  don't  believe  what  they  are  preaching ; 
second,  that  the  missionary  is  in  it  for  monej^s 

"I  have  never  baptized  a  Jew.  I  have  been  a  rector  f oi- 
some  time  in  Pliiladelphia  and  there  I  baptized  Gentiles — 
but  never  a  Jew. 

"You  don't  know  what  it  means  and  costs  for  a  Jew  to 
be  baptized — the  rended  soul,  the  disrupted  family,  the 
desertion  of  friends,  the  loss  of  respect.  How  can  you 
expect  that  a  Jew  who  has  forsaken  the  faith  of  liis 
fathei-s  can  sing-:  'O,  happy  day  that  fixed  my  choice' ?6  I 
tell  you  there  is  no  happy  day  for  him. 

"The  name  of  Christ  and  of  Christianity  has  so  long- 
been  associated  with  the  wrongs,  sufferings,  sorrows  and 
persecutions  of  the  Jews,  that  an  Israelite  can  never  for- 
get it." 

CHRISTIANITY    ISOT   FOR   JEWS 

"Tlie  Jew  stands  for  pure  monotheism,  but  the  Christian 
does  not,  for  he  has  set  up  Clirist  as  a  divine  object  of 
worshi]).  for  which  no  authority  is  given  in  the  Bible. 
How,  then,  shall  Christianity  lead  a  Jew  to  be  a  better 
man  or  lead  a  better  life  than  he  would  if  he  had  followed 
his  mother   instead   of   running  away  to   his   stepmother? 


could  not  be  choked  off  so  easily.  In  my  response  1 
avoided  all  reference  to  Christianit3-.  and  only  gave  ex- 
|)ressiou  to  ])tirely  human  sentimeiits,  such  as  are  Iikel_\' 
to  be  aroused  by  meeting  oldtime  friends. 

5Is  not  the  second  implied  in  the  first?  What  I  prob- 
ably said  was :  Second,  because  the  converts  they  make 
are  attracted  by  the  hope  of  financial  gain. 

6Alluding  to  the  hymn  that  was  sung  before  I  started  to 
speak,   the  first  line   of  which  is  quoted. 


'^'^In  Open  Meeting'^  13 

"On  your  program  is  an  address  on  'Atheism  Among'  the 
Jews,'  and  you  think  it  would  be  a  good  thing  to  make 
Christians  of  them.  \Miat  for?  They  don't  understand 
the  New  Testament,  and  so  what  is  the  use  to  take  them 
from  the  faith  of  their  youth? 

"It  is  like  falling-  between  two  stools— they  -will  come 
to  the  ground. ''T^'rom  this  day  forth  I  will  never  baptize 
a  Jew  or  anj^body  else,  for  I  won't  make  anybodj-  suffer 
as  I  have  for  the  last  17  years. 

"I  speak  to  both  houses  here — ^the  Jews  and  the  Chris- 
tians. If  you  are  satisfied  with  your  faith,  stick  to  it,  and 
God  bless  you. 

^  "I  warn  you  Christians  to  be  careful  what  you  do  in  tak- 
ing- a  Jewish  child  away  from  his  familj^  so  that  you  can 
make   a   Christian   disciple. 

KENOUNCES   CHRISTIAN   PULPIT 

"I  don't  know  where  I  shall  go,  or  what  I  shall  do.  I 
have  no  money  and  no  family.  My  church  will  no  longer 
fellowship  with  me,  of  course,  and  perhaps  the  Jews  will 
not.''  But  I  can  still  fellowship  with  the  dead  prophets, 
saints  and  martj^rs. 

The  other  day  a  baptized  Jew  asked  me  for  five  cents  to 
pay  a  car  fare,  because  the  minister  who  baptized  him 
wouldn't  give  it  to  him.  Now  that  man  is  on  his  way  to 
Europe,  on  the  fruits  of  his — what  shall  I  call  it? — his 
crime. 

"If  ever  I  preach  in  any  Christian  pulpit  again,  may  my 
right  hand  forget  its  cunning  and  may  my  tongue  cleave 


Y- 


7My  doubts   on   this    point   have   b»en   happily   removed, 
(yee  Chapter  XVI.) 


14         A  Missionary-s  Return  to  Judaism 

to  the  roof  of  my  mouth." 

As  Mr.  Freuder  closed  he  was  reminded  that  he  "had 
not  talked  much  about  'Christ  in  the  Talmud,' "  to  which 
he  replied,  "My  address  is  like  Josh  Billings'  lecture  on 
milk.    The  milk  was  in  the  tumbler,  but  not  in  his  lecture." 

"terrible  blow" 

Pres.  Niles  rose  with  great  agitation,  and  as  soon  as  he 
could  find  voice,  he  recounted  his  relations  of  years  w^ith 
Mr.  Freuder,  and  added  :  "I  have  believed  that  he  was  a 
truly-converted  Christian.  This  is  a  great  surprise  and  a 
terrible  blow  to  me.  If  he  has  found  coldness  and  wrong 
in  Christians,  it  is  because  he  has  dwelt  only  upon  their 
faults.  I  hope  our  prayers  will  follow  him.  If  the  truth 
has  ever  once  entered  his  soul,  it  will  never  leave  him.  and 
if  he  comes  back  in  prayer  to  God  he  will  be  restored. 

"I  know  there  is  sorrow  and  suffering  in  the  soul  of  a 
converted  Jew,  but  there  is  joy,  gladness  and  peace  which 
counterbalances   and   overcomes   the   suffering. 

"This  is  no  setback  for  us.  It  is  a  call  to  push  forward 
in  the  work  and  may  be  the  glory  of  our  conference." 

Mark  Levy  said :  "I  have  known  brother  Freuder  longer 
than  any  other  here,  and  I  can  truly  sympathize  with  him. 
Brother  Freuder,  I  know  your  sorrow  and  tribulations; 
but  don't  go  away.  Don't  turn  your  back  upon  all  you 
have  believed  and  taught  for  17  years.  Let  us  on  our 
knees  take  it  all  to  God." 

HIGHER   CBITlClrfM   BLAMED 

Pres.  Niles  added:  "The  cause,  I  fear,  is  the  'higher 
criticism.'     Young  men  in  the  universities  are  not  coming 


''In  Open  Meeting"  15 

back  to  the  orthodox  synagogues.  They  push  away  the 
faith  taught  at  their  mother's  knees,  and  make  their  in- 
tellect their  God.  If  God  don't  bare  his  arm  America  will 
become  a  cesspool  of  intellectualism  and  culture." 

Miss  Angel,  daughter  of  the  clergyman  who  baptized 
Mr,  Freuder,  told  interesting  incidents  in  the  career  of  the 
latter,  said  that  he  was  one  of  the  most  generous  and 
faithful  of  men,  and  she  believed  he  had  always  been  sin- 
cere until  his  address  of  the  afternoon,  and  that  he  meant 
to  be  then  but  that  down  deep  in  his  heart  he  still  be- 
lieved in  Christ  and  would  come  back  to  him. 

Several  others  spoke  in  sorrow  and  sympathy,  earnest 
and  pathetic  prayers  were  offered  and  the  meeting  closed 
with  evangelistic  song  and  the  benediction.? 


sThese  kind  but  exaggerated  estimates  of  me  give  an 
inkling  of  what  might  have  happened  in  case  I  had  died 
prior  to  the  meeting.  Undoubtedly  I  should  have  been  held 
up  as  a  shining  example  of  a  convert  from  Judaism, 
and  counted  among  those  who — in  book  s  and  tracts 
written  for  proselytizing  purposes — are  cited  as  evidence 
of  the  power  of  the  Gospel  to  touch  the  heart  of  a  Jew 
and  make  him  devote  his  life  to  the  conversion  of  his 
Jewish  brethren.  Happily  I  lived  long  enough  to  prevent 
this  undeserved  halo  from  gathering  round  my  head. 


CHAPTER  II 

DEPOSED  FROM  THE  CHRISTIAN  MINISTRY 

For  some  reason  my  case  was  considered  in- 
teresting enough  to  be  reported  in  the  Associated 
Press  dispatches  and  discussed  by  writers  in  the 
secular  and  religious  press  and  by  preachers 
from  Jewish  and  Christian  pulpits.  From  all 
parts  of  the  country  I  received  letters,  mostly 
written  by  Christian  friends,  asking  for  par- 
ticulars, some  even  doubting  the  correctness  of 
the  newspaper  reports.  I  left  all  those  letters 
unanswered,  because  what  I  wanted  at  that  time 
was  to  forget  and  to  be  forgotten. 

The  exception  was  a  letter  of  inquiry  from  the 
Protestant  Episcopal  Bishop  of  Pennsylvania, 
under  whose  ecclesiastical  jurisdiction  I  had  been 
placed.  To  him  I  felt  in  duty  bound  to  explain 
my  action,  and  I  did  so  in  the  following  letter : 

16 


Deposed  from  the  Christian  Ministry     17 

New  Yoek,  June  25,   190f 

To  THE  Rt.  Rev.  O.  W.  Whitaker, 

My  Dear  Bishop: — In  accordance  with  Canon  31,  Sec- 
tion I  of  the  General  Digest,  I  hereby  request  to  be  deposed 
from  the  Ministry  of  the  Church. 

For  some  time  the  conviction  has  been  growing  upon 
me  that  I  am  out  of  place  in  the  Ministry  of  the  Church, 
because  of  the  following  reasons : 

I.  I  cannot  believe  in  the  doctrine  of  the  Trinity. 
Apart   from   the   fact   that   it   is   inconceivable    how   one 

can  be  three  and  three  one,  it  seems  to  me  that  this  doc- 
trine runs  counter  to  the  pure  monotheism  taught  and  in- 
sisted upon  both  in  the  Old  and  New  Testament.  No 
amount  of  juggling  with  words  and  their  meanings  can 
ever  satisfy  a  student's  mind  that  this  doctrine  could  have 
had  its  origin  and  growth  upon  Jewish  soil.  It  was  a 
great  misfortune  to  the  human  race  that  the  early  Greek 
and  Roman  fathers  of  the  Church  could  not  divest  them- 
selves entirely  of  their  inherited  polytheistic  notions. 

II.  I  cannot  believe  in  the  divinity  of  Jesus. 

The  matchless  beauty  of  the  character  and  life  of  Jesus 
has  been  a  most  potent  factor  in  drawing  me  to  Chris- 
tianity'. I  still  love  and  shall  ever  delight  to  think  of 
Jesus  in  the  words  of  Rabbi  Hirsch,  of  Chicago,  as  "the 
lowly  and  holy  Rabbi  of  Nazareth."  But  it  is  impossible 
for  me  to  worship  him  as  "the  only  begotten  Son  of  God" ; 
for  even  if  it  be  admitted  that  Moses  in  the  law  and  the 
prophets  pointed  to  Jesus  as  the  coming  Messiah,  there 
still   remains  an   impassable   gulf   between   the   Jewish  ex- 


18        A  Missionary's  Return  to  Judaism 

pectation  of  the  Messiah  and  its  realization  as  believed 
in  by  Christians,  who  invest  the  Messiah  with  all  the 
attributes  of  Deity  and  worship  him  as  the  Son  of  God, 
I  am  inclined  to  think  that  Jesus  himself,  and  all  the 
Apostles,  inwrought  and  ingrained  as  was  in  their  mental 
constitution  the  monotheistic  idea,  would  repudiate  the 
deification  of  a  man,  no  matter  how  transcendent  his 
character  was. 

When  these  heretical  views  concerning  the  essential 
points  of  the  Christian  creed  began  to  press  upon  me, 
and  ere  they  assumed  their  present  full  force  and  weight, 
I  used  to  lull  my  disturbed  mind  into  quiet  by  the  sooth- 
ing thought  that  after  all,  as  far  as  its  moral  teachings  are 
concerned,  Christianity  was  superior  to  the  faith  of  my 
youth ;  but  closer  study  and  observation  have  shown  me 
that  I  was  mistaken  in  this,  also.  For  there  is  no  differ- 
ence between  the  Jewish  and  Christian  moral  standard. 
The  fountain  of  the  New  Testament  rises  no  higher  than 
its  source — the  Old  Testament.  The  writers  of  the  New 
Testament  were  men  imbued  with  the  Old  Testament  spirit. 
The  loftiest  ethical  principles  enunciated  in  the  New 
Testament  find  their  parallels  in  the  writing  of  the  Rabbis 
in  the  Talmud  and  Midrash. 

And  as  it  is  in  theory,  so  it  is  in  practical  life.  If  Chris- 
tian commentators  of  the  Bible  are  in  the  habit  of  speak- 
ing about  "Jewish  bigotry,"  "Jewish  greed  for  money," 
C  "Jewish    vindictiveness,"    and    of    other    uncomplimentary 

Jewish  characteristics,  they  may  be  correct  as  far  as  the 
contemporaries  of  Jesus  are  concerned ;  but,  when  they 
Xrj  to  prove  by  those  supposed  characteristics  the  superi- 


Deposed  from  the  Christian  Ministry     19 

ority  of  the  New  over  the  Old  Testament,  they  are  mis- 
taken. As  a  matter  of  fact  Judaism  has  produced  just  as 
great  and  noble  characters  as  can  be  found  among  Chris- 
tians. The  life  of  Sir  Moses  Montefiore,  for  instance,  or 
the  life  of  my  sainted  father — representatives  of  ortho- 
dox Judaism — or  the  life  of  the  late  Eabbi  Isaac  M.  Wise 
— the  champion  of  reformed  Judaism  in  this  country — will 
not  suffer  by  comparison  with  that  of  any  of  the  saints 
in  the  Christian  calendar. 

Pardon  me,  my  dear  Bishop,  if  I  refer  in  this  connection 
to  the  work  of  converting  the  Jews  to  Christianity,  a  work 
in  which  you,  inspired  no  doubt  by  the  highest  motives  of 
religion  and  philanthropy,  have  been  so  deeply  interested. 
That  work  is  carried  on  for  the  most  part  by  those  who 
are  converted  Jews  themselves.  The  stock-in-trade  argu- 
ment used  for  the  necessity  of  converting  the  Jews  is  the 
low  moral  condition  of  the  Jews,  which  is  depicted  in  the 
most  lurid  colors  by  the  Hebrew  missionaries  who,  like 
those  rare  birds,  will  befoul  their  own  nests.  As  you  will 
kindly  remember  I  have  been  engaged  in  this  proselyting 
work  for  some  time,  but  without  success.  I  am  now  not 
sorry  that  I  failed  to  baptize  any  of  my  Jewish  brethren, 
for  my  experience  and  observation  have  shown  me  that 
in  most  cases  the  baptismal  font  becomes  to  the  Jew  a 
fountain  of  sorrow  and  despair.  To  be  successful  in  the 
work  of  converting  the  Jews  one  must  not  shrink  back 
from  mummery,  mendicancy  and  mendacity.  Were  the 
true  facts  known  about  the  methods  used  in  getting  Jews 
to  be  baptized,  the  Hebrew  Christian  missionaries,  with 
a  few  honorable  exceptions,  would  soon  find  their  occupa- 


20         A  Missionary-s  Return  to  Judaism 

tion  gone,  and  they  would  be  forced  either  to  make  an 
honest  living,  or,  if  that  be  impossible,  to  turn  their  fak- 
ing abilities  into  some  business  channels  less  destructive 
of  true  manhood  and  morality. 

My  happiness  over  the  relief  from  an  unnatural  position 
is  marred  only  by  the  necessity  I  am  under  of  expressing 
these  views,  which  must  be  disappointing  and  distasteful 
to  you,  my  gracious  benefactor  on  so  many  occasions,  and 
to  others  in  the  Chiirch  whose  lovingkindness  I  shall  ever 
gratefully  remember.  But  "Plato  is  my  friend,  Socrates 
is  my  friend,  but  truth   is   a  friend   I  prize   above  both." 

Very  respectfully, 

Samuel  Freudeb. 

My  record  being  clean,  with  no  charge  of  any 
nature  against  me,  the  Bishop  granted  my  re- 
quest and  deposed  me  from  the  ministry.  But 
he  did  it  in  so  gracious  a  way  that  I  gladly  avail 
myself  of  the  opportunity  of  paying  a  slight 
tribute  to  his  memory  (he  passed  away  on 
February  9,  1911)  by  printing  his  reply  in  full. 

It  was  as  follows : 

THE  BISHOP'S  ROOMS 
The  Diocese  of  Pennsylvania. 
Church  House,  I2th  and  Walnut  Streets, 

Philadelphia,  July  9,  1908. 
My  Dear  Freuder: 

Your  letter  of  June  25th  was  duly  received  and  would 
have    been    answered    before    now    but    for    reasons    which 


Deposed  from   the  Christian  Ministry    21 

rendered  it  practicallj^  impossible  for  me  to  write  you. 
My  correspondence  has  been  much  hindered  of  late  by  my 
inability  to  read.  There  are  days  when  I  can  see  and 
others  when  I  cannot.  Sometimes  I  can  read  for  an  hour 
a  day  and  then  the  ability  to  see  g-oes  as  quickly  as  it 
came. 

I  sincerely  regret  the  change  of  sentiment  and  cojivic- 
tion  which  lead  you  to  desire  to  have  your  connection  with 
the  Christian  ministry  terminated,  but  I  respect  the  frank- 
ness with  which  you  have  stated  the  cause  to  me  and  I 
shall  take  as  early  an  opportunity  as  possible  for  carrying 
your  request  into  effect ;  and  when  I  do  you  shall  be 
promptly  notified.  Should  you  change  your  address  in  the 
near  future  please  inform  me.  It  is  necessary  for  me  to 
go  away  from  Philadelphia  for  a  time,  but  letters  ad- 
dressed to  the  Church  House  will  be  forwarded. 

With  best  wishes  for  j'our  welfare,  I  am 

Faithfully  yours, 
(Signed)    O.  W.  Whitakeb. 
The  Rev.  Samuel  Freuder. 

Accordingly,  the  following  notice  appeared  in 
The  Churchman  (a  weekly  paper  of  the  Protes- 
tant Episcopal  Church,  published  in  New  York 
City)  in  the  issue  of  September  6,  1908: 

DEPOSITIONS. 

DIOCESE    OF    PENNSYLVANIA. 

Bishop  Whitaker  has  sent  out  the  canonical  notice  of 
his  having  deposed  from  the  ministry  of  the  Church,  the 


22        A  Atissionary's  Return  to  Judaism 

Rev.  Samuel  Freuder,  deacon,  and  the  Rev,  Francis  Mc- 
Fetrich,  priest,  upon  their  written  request,  for  causes 
which  do  not  affect  their  moral  character. 

One  more  letter  should  find  a  place  here,  both 
because  it  is  an  illuminating  illustration  of  the 
way  modern  Christians  are  disposed  to  treat  a 
"heretic,"  and  also  because  I  desire  to  pay  a 
tribute  to  the  memory  of  its  writer,  the  late  Rev. 
Dr.  William  R.  Huntington,  Rector  of  Grace 
Episcopal  Church  of  New  York  City.  This  is 
the  same  Dr.  Huntington  who,  it  will  be  remem- 
bered by  the  grateful  Jewish  people,  showed  his 
sympathy  for  the  Jewish  victims  of  Russian 
"Christians"  in  a  most  impressive  manner.  When, 
after  the  Kishineff  massacre,  the  Jews  of  New 
York  arranged  for  a  memorial  procession  in 
honor  of  the  martyrs.  Doctor  Huntington  had 
the  church  bells  tolled  and  stood  for  hours,  bare- 
headed, at  the  entrance  of  the  church,  while  the 
procession  marched  by. 

This  was  the  occasion  for  his  letter : 
At  the  time  I  withdrew  from  the  Church,  I 
was  a  member   of  the  clerical  staff  of  Grace 
Church,  and  its  treasurer  sent  me  a  check  for  my 


Deposed  from  the  Christian  Ministry    23 

salary  for  the  month  of  June  in  advance.  I  felt 
that,  having  made  my  declaration  in  the  early 
part  of  the  month,  I  had  no  right  to  accept  the 
money,  and  I  returned  the  check.  But  Doctor 
Huntington  sent  it  back  with  the  following  note : 

June  16,  1908. 
My  Deae  Mr.  Fbeudeb  : 

I  consider  this  money  fairly  j'^otirs  under  the  terms  of 
our  agreement — and  beg  you  to  retain  it  "without  scruple 
or  doubtfulness." 

Yours   faithfully, 

(Signed)       W.  R.  Huntington. 


CHAPTER  III 


MY   EARLY   LIFE 


I  CAN  almost  hear  some  of  my  readers  ex- 
claiming, with  a  touch  of  impatience,  "He  has 
told  how  he  got  out  of  the  Church ;  why  does  he 
not  tell  how  he  got  into  it?"  I  shall  do  this  in 
the  next  chapter,  to  which,  my  dear  reader,  you 
may  turn  at  once,  if  you  wish.  But  I  would 
rather  not  have  you  skip  this  chapter,  for  the 
reason  that  some  facts  herein  related  may  help 
to  a  better  understanding  of  what  is  to  follow. 
No  act  in  a  man's  life  stands  alone  and  unrelated, 
each  is  the  effect  and  outcome  of  actions  that 
preceded  it.  Besides,  there  can  be  no  true  es- 
timate of  a  man's  character  and  his  conduct, 
unless  we  know  something  about  his  parentage 

and  the  environments  of  his  early  life. 

24 


My  Early  Life  25 

I  was  born  in  Nemet  Keresztur,  a  little  town 
of  Hungary,  where  my  father  was  the  Hazan  ( the 
official  who  reads  and  chants  the  prayers  and 
hymns  at  the  synagog)  of  the  congregation  for 
over  fifty  years,  having  succeeded  his  father,  who 
had  served  nearly  sixty  years.  Both  my  father 
and  grandfather  were  known  as  men  of  more 
than  ordinary  piety  and  devotion.  Three  of  my 
paternal  uncles  were  Rabbis  of  some  note,  one  of 
them  being  the  author  of  a  Hebrew  commentary 
on  Genesis. 

My  mother  also  came  of  a  very  pious  family. 
She  died  when  I  w^as  about  a  year  old.  My 
father,  being  left  with  five  motherless  children, 
married  a  second  wife,  who  bore  him  thirteen 
more  children,  while  his  salary  remained  about 
the  same.  Yet  the  stings  of  poverty  did  not 
wound  his  spirit.  He  trusted  in  God  with  all  his 
soul.  A  favorite  Talmudical  quotation  of  his 
was,  "He  that  giveth  life,  will  also  provide  the 
means  of  living." 

When  only  two  years  old  I  acquired  a  reputa- 
tion for  having  a  "fine  head,"  as  the  Jewish 
phrase  goes,  by  the  following  incident.    One  day, 


26         A  Missionary's  Return  to  Judaism 

looking  out  of  the  window,  I  saw  the  Rabbi,  our 
next-door  neighbor,  enter  our  yard  with  a  basket, 
into  which  he  started  to  put  some  linen  from 
off  the  clothes  line.  Unaware  of  the  fact  that  an 
increase  in  the  Rabbi's  family  had  caused  an 
extension  of  his  clothes  lines  into  our  yard,  I 
began  to  rap  on  the  window  with  all  my  might 
and  to  shout  at  the  intruder.  As  the  Rabbi, 
curious  to  learn  the  cause  of  my  excitement,  ap- 
proached me,  I  shook  my  finger  at  him,  exclaim- 
ing: "You  Gannef  (thief),  don't  steal  our 
things !" 

There  was  in  this  incident  an  almost  prophetic 
foreshadowing  of  my  future,  when  I  often  stood 
up  for  the  right,  and  yet  was  wrong. 

As  soon  as  I  had  learned  to  walk,  I  accom- 
panied my  father  to  the  daily  services  at  the 
synagog,  where  I  would  sit  on  the  steps  leading 
to  the  Holy  Ark,  and  proudly  join  in  the  re- 
sponses of  Boruch  Hu  Uvoruch  Shemo  (Praised 
be  He  and  His  name)  and  in  the  "Amens." 

Even  in  cold  weather  I  would  beg  to  be  taken 
along,  and,  there  being  no  heating  facilities  in 
the   old-fashioned   synagog,    I   would   put   both 


My  Early  Life  27 

hands  into  one  of  ni}'  father's  coat  pockets  to 
keep  warm,  and  he  would  now  and  then  stroke 
my  face  with  his  hand  to  remove  the  coldness. 

I  attended  the  day  school  maintained  by  the 
congregation  and  also  the  private  Talmud  school, 
the  teacher  of  which,  like  Washington  Irving's 
Ichabod  Crane,  eked  out  a  living  by  boarding,  a 
week  at  a  time,  in  the  homes  of  his  pupils.  And 
I  well  recollect  how  eagerly  we  looked  forward 
to  the  teacher's  turn  at  our  house,  as  his  coming- 
meant  a  week  of  gastronomic  rejoicings,  for  the 
best  and  most  expensive  dishes  were  prepared 
in  his  honor. 

My  father's  fondest  hope  was  that  I  should 
grow  up  to  be  "a  light  and  lamp  in  Israel,"  and 
he  watched  with  special  solicitude  my  progress 
in  the  study  of  the  Talmud.  If  I  passed  a  good 
examination — conducted  by  the  Rabbi  on  Sat- 
urday afternoons — he  would  reward  me  with  an 
apple  or  a  penny,  given  in  secret,  so  as  not  to 
excite  the  jealousy  of  the  other  children.  After 
a  heavy  snowfall  he  would  carry  me  to  school  on 
his  back,  while  to  my  back  was  tied  a  bundle  of 
wood,  the  contribution  every  pupil  was  expected 


28         A  Missionanfs  Return  to  Judaism 

to  make  to  the  feeding  of  a  green-tiled  monster 
of  a  stove. 

At  the  age  of  twelve  I  was  sent  to  the  famous 
Yeshibah  (Talmudical  Academy)  of  Pressbiirg, 
Hungary,  to  be  taken  care  of  by  a  brother  of  my 
mother,  Rabbi  David  Neumann  (Lakenbach). 
He  is  the  author  of  a  Hebrew  work  entitled  ^'Nir 
David"  and  at  the  time  of  his  death,  January  6, 
1908,  he  was  the  Rosh  Beth  Din  (Chief  Justice) 
of  the  Pressburg  Jewish  community. 

To  my  uncle  the  Talmud  was  the  all-in-all.  In 
it  he  lived,  moved,  and  had  his  being.  With  all 
the  intensity  of  his  fiery  soul  he  loved  tra- 
ditional Judaism,  and  hated  all  modern  innova- 
tions, which,  he  believed,  are  bound  to  lead  to 
its  destruction.  He  would  not  allow  a  German 
book  to  be  brought  into  the  house,  and  he  put  a 
ban  even  on  Moses  Mendelssohn's  Bible  transla- 
tion, which  we  had  been  using  at  my  father's 
house  without  any  qualms  of  conscience.  His 
extreme  views  led  to  my  reading,  unbeknown  to 
him,  any  kind  of  a  German  book  I  could  get  hold 
of,  either  by  borrowing  or  buying  with  the  meagre 
pocket  money  at  my  disposal. 


My  Early  Life  29 

My  progress  in  the  study  of  the  Talmud  was 
so  satisfactory  that  my  uncle  never  learned  of 
my  secret  indulgence  in  the  tabooed  studies,  un- 
til informed  by  a  fellow-student  of  mine,  who 
betrayed  me,  notwithstanding  the  precaution  I 
had  taken  of  binding  him  over  to  secrecy  by  a 
solemn  oath  in  front  of  the  Holy  Ark.  My  uncle 
gave  me  a  severe  beating,  coupled  with  the  warn- 
ing, that  a  repetition  of  the  offence  would  lead  to 
expulsion  from  his  home. 

But  my  hunger  for  secular  knowledge  was  too 
great  to  be  suppressed,  and  I  soon  thereafter  left 
for  another  Talmudical  academy,  where  a  broader 
spirit  prevailed.  When  the  Rabbinical  Seminary 
of  Budapest  opened,  I  intended  to  enroll  as  a 
student,  but  my  father  was  so  sure  that  if  I 
entered  that  seminary,  which  was  condemned  by 
the  orthodox  Jews  of  Hungary,  he  would  lose  his 
position,  that  I  yielded  to  his  entreaties,  and  in- 
stead entered  the  Rabbinical  Seminary  of  Berlin, 
Germany,  which  was  founded  by  the  late  Doctor 
Israel  Hildesheimer. 

This  wonderful  man,  combining  in  his  person 
the  highest  modern  culture  with  the  deepest  love 


30         A  Missionary's  Return  to  Judaism 

for  and  loyalty  to  the  orthodox  Jewish  faith, 
made  it  his  lifework  to  produce  the  same  com- 
bination in  the  students  of  the  Seminary.  Ac- 
cordingly, the  study  of  the  classics  and  of  philos- 
ophy went  hand  in  hand  with  the  reverential 
study  of  the  Talmud  and  scrupulous  observance 
of  its  precepts. 

In  my  case  the  combination  failed  to  work.  At 
every  advance  in  secular  studies  my  orthodoxy 
lagged  behind,  so  that  I  found  myself  no  longer 
in  sympathy  and  accord  with  the  Hildesheimer 
platform.  I  therefore  decided  to  cut  the  Gordian 
knot  of  theological  problems  by  quitting  the 
Rabbinical  career  and  seeking  a  new  start  in 
life  in  the  western  hemisphere. 

A  most  potent  influence  in  my  decision  to  come 
to  America  was  the  anti-Semitic  agitation  then 
raging  fiercely  in  Berlin  under  the  leadership  of 
the  court-chaplain  Stoecker.  The  constant  at- 
tacks on  the  Jewish  race  and  religion  made  in  the 
press  and  forum  embittered  my  soul,  and  turned 
my  mind  towards  the  country  that  was  founded 
on  the  motto :  "All  men  are  equal  before  the  law." 

On  the  way  over  I  came  near  getting  into 


My  Early  Life  81 

serious  trouble.  On  the  first  day  out  the  cabin 
passengers  amused  themselves  by  throwing  apples 
and  nuts  to  the  steerage  passengers,  most  of 
them  Jews,  who  scrambled  and  fought  in  a  most 
disagreeable  fashion  for  the  things  tossed  to 
them.  The  next  day,  when  the  performance  was 
about  to  be  repeated,  I  urged  the  passengers 
below  not  to  take  what  was  given  with  so  much 
contempt.  I  was  haled  before  the  captain  for 
disturbing  the  peace.  Nevertheless,  the  obnox- 
ious practice  was  discontinued,  but  for  the  rest 
of  the  journey  I  had  to  bear  the  ill-will  not  only 
of  those  whose  proud  pleasure  I  had  disturbed, 
but  also  of  those  whom  I  had  deprived  of  the 
chance  of  obtaining  an  apple  at  the  cost  of  being 
humiliated. 

In  July  of  1883  I  landed  in  New  York,  intend- 
ing to  throAv  away  "the  load  of  learned  lumber" 
and  to  make  a  living  as  thousands  of  young  im- 
migrants do  who  have  never  read  a  book  in  all 
their  lives.  My  hope  was  to  become  a  prosperous 
merchant,  and  I  made  a  start  for  that  final  goal 
by  peddling  with  suspenders.  Who  knows  but 
that  I  might  have  succeeded  in  the  end,  had  not 


32         A  Missionary's  Return  to  Judaism 

my  peddling  career  been  cut  short  by  a  letter  of 
recommendation,  which  I  should  have  thrown 
away,  too.  This  letter  to  a  prominent  business 
man  of  Cincinnati,  Ohio,  drew  me  to  that  city. 
The  gentleman  to  w^hom  the  letter  was  addressed 
— perhaps  because  he  failed  to  see  in  me  a  mer- 
cantile genius,  or  perhaps  because  it  was  the 
easiest  way  of  getting  rid  of  me — turned  me  over 
to  the  Rev.  Doctor  Isaac  M.  Wise,  the  founder 
and  president  of  the  Hebrew  Union  College  of 
Cincinnati,  O.  (born,  1819;  died,  1900). 

At  our  very  first  meeting  Doctor  Wise  seemed 
to  take  a  fancy  to  me.  He  was  an  exceedingly 
sympathetic  man,  and  it  is  quite  probable  that 
I  interested  him  the  more  because  he  himself  had 
experienced  in  his  own  life  the  great  soul  struggle 
which  one  who  hates  cant  and  hypocrisy  has  to 
undergo  in  his  efforts  to  reconcile  his  advanced 
religious  views  with  the  faith  of  his  childhood. 
"Deep  calleth  unto  deep  at  the  noise  of  thy 
waterspouts :  all  thy  waves  and  billows  are  gone 
over  me"  ( Ps.  42:7).  Several  interviews  resulted 
in  the  conclusion  that  my  religious  views  were 
not  too  radical  for  a  Reform  congregation.     As 


My  Early  Life  33 

a  matter  of  fact,  I  even  had  a  little  orthodoxy  to 
spare. 

In  order  to  facilitate  my  study  of  English, 
Doctor  Wise  took  me  out  to  his  country  home, 
where,  as  he  jocosely  remarked,  even  his  hens 
cackled  in  English. 

In  the  autumn  of  the  same  year  (1883)  I 
entered  the  Hebrew  Union  College,  and  also 
registered  as  a  student  at  the  McVicker  Univer- 
sity of  Cincinnati.  Eager  to  acquire  a  thorough 
knowledge  of  the  English  language  and  of 
American  ways  and  manners,  I  spent  my  leisure 
time  in  attending  all  kinds  of  meetings,  where  [ 
could  hear  the  living  word  and  observe  the 
American  spirit  in  action.  On  Sundays  I  at- 
tended any  church  I  happened  to  stroll  into,  only 
for  the  sake  of  seeing  how  the  preaching  is  done. 
(What  a  pity  that  the  preaching  is  not  always 
done!) 

A  year  later  (1884)  I  accepted  a  position  as 
Rabbi  in  a  small  congregation  in  Georgia,  where 
I  began  to  preach  in  English.    I  mention  this  to 


34         A  Missionary's  Return  to  Judaism 

show  how  much  forbearance  and  indulgence  some 
Jewish  congregations  possess. 

While  in  that  position  I  attended  the  Mercer 
University  of  Macon,  Ga.,  from  which  I  was 
graduated  (1885)  with  the  degree  of  Bachelor 
of  Arts. 

In  1886  I  was  graduated  from  the  Hebrew 
Union  College  of  Cincinnati,  with  the  degree  of 
Rabbi. 

In  my  various  positions  as  Rabbi  I  failed  to 
achieve  success.  I  blame  nobody  but  myself, 
although  it  would  be  easy  to  roll  part  of  the 
blame  upon  the  shoulders  of  others  that  have 
contributed  to  my  failure.  But  what  good  pur- 
pose could  be  accomplished  thereby?  A  criticism 
of  men  and  conditions  of  nearly  a  quarter  of  a 
century  ago  would  require  the  space  of  a  volume 
to  be  useful  and  the  pen  of  a  Zangwill  to  be 
readable.  I  have  neither.  The  main  reason  for 
my  failure  as  a  Rabbi  can  perhaps  best  be  seen 
from  a  letter  by  Doctor  Wise,  dated  1887,  part 
of  which  reads  as  follows: 

"As  much,  as  I  could  ascertain  Sunday's  general  meet- 
ing   will    re-elect    you.      There    is    no    fault    found    with 


My  Early  Life  35 

you  on  the  score  of  scholarship,  activities  and  capabilities, 
but  rather  there  is  given  you  the  praise  due  to  a  promising 
young  man  of  culture.  What  tells  against  you  is  that  you 
have  only  a  few  friends  because  you  are  unmindful  of  the 
Puk  Chazi  Mo  Ame  Debar  (Gk>  out  and  observe  what  the 
people  are  saying).  You  want  to  figure  as  an  authority 
without  having  had  time  enough  to  acquire  the  confidence 
and  the  good-will  of  the  public,  even  as  others  want  to 
get  rich  in  a  hurry  and  without  much  labor,  and  if  they 
don't  succeed  in  short  order,  they  grow  despondent,  despair 
and  give  up  the  ship !  That  will  never  do.  In  the  Talmud 
it  says:  Sof  Hakovod  Lovo  (At  the  end  honor  comes), 
but  not  before  the  work.  It  takes  years  of  patience  and 
perseverance  to  acquire  a  reasonable  measure  of  honor 
and  confidence.  There  is  no  thriving  by  rapid  changes. 
If  you  want  to  secure  a  future,  you  must  settle  down 
and  gain  respect  in  the  place  where  you  are,  otherwise 
you  will  spoil  your  whole  career.  And  this  (the  gaining 
of  respect)  takes  a  little  longer  in  America  than  in 
Europe ;  it  requires  patience,  prudence,  humility,  and 
forbearance  with  human  frailties." 

(Signed)  Isaac  M.  Wi8«. 

I  failed  to  heed  the  good  counsel  of  my  best 
friend,  and  his  prophetic  words,  "otherwise  you 
will  spoil  your  whole  career,"  were  bound  to  have 
their  fulfilment. 


CHAPTER  IV 

MY  LIFE  AS  A  CONVERT 

In  my  letter  requesting  the  Bishop  to  depose 
me  from  the  Christian  ministry  I  said  :  "Were  the 
true  facts  known  about  the  methods  used  in  get- 
ting Jews  to  be  baptized,  the  Hebrew-Christian 
missionaries — with  a  few  honorable  exceptions 
— w^ould  soon  find  their  occupation  gone." 

And  now,  after  a  silence  of  six  years,  I  appear 
before  the  High  Court  of  Public  Opinion  to  make 
known  those  true  facts  about  the  work  of  the 
Hebrew-Christian  missionaries.  For  the  sake  of 
bringing  out  clearly  all  the  salient  points  I 
present  my  testimou}-  in  the  form  of  answers  to 
questions  that  I  thought  would  most  likely  be 
asked  were  I  to  testify  in  actual  court  proceed- 
ings. 

In   taking   the   witness  stand,   as  it  were,    I 

36 


My  Life  as  a  Convert  37 

virtually  consider  myself  under  a  solemn  oath 
"to  tell  the  truth,  the  whole  truth,  and  nothing 
but  the  truth." 

Q.  Will  you  state  the  time,  place,  and  cir- 
cumstances of  your  baptism? 

A.  I  was  baptized  in  1891,  at  the  Chicago 
Hebrew  Mission  (an  institution  founded  "to 
spread  the  Gospel  among  the  Jews  and  to  bring 
God's  ancient  people  to  the  feet  of  Christ"). 
The  ceremony  was  performed  in  the  meeting- 
room,  in  the  presence  of  about  one  hundred  peo- 
ple, mostly  Jews  living  in  the  neighborhood  of 
the  mission,  who  had  come  to  witness  the  strange 
sight.  The  late  Reverend  Doctor  H.  M.  Scott, 
professor  at  the  Chicago  Theological  Seminary, 
who  officiated,  opened  the  service  with  a  hymn, 
which  was  followed  by  prayer  and  reading  from 
the  Bible,  the  fifty-third  chapter  of  Isaiah  being 
selected.  Then  Professor  Scott  took  a  goblet 
from  the  table,  and  pouring  some  water  into  his 
palm,  he  let  it  drop  slowly  over  the  crown  of  my 
head,  while  he  pronounced  the  usual  formula  of 
baptism.  Little  did  I  dream  then  what  a  sea 
of  trouble  these  few  drops  of  water  were  prepar- 


38         A  Missionary's  Return  to  Judaism 

ing  for  me.  Several  addresses  by  missionary 
friends  followed.  I  made  some  remarks  myself, 
but  I  have  never  been  able  for  the  life  of  me  to 
recall  what  I  said. 

During  the  singing  of  the  closing  hymn  most 
of  the  Jews  present  rose  to  their  feet,  and  left 
the  room  with  ill-suppressed  disgust  and  anger. 
A  few  of  them,  on  reaching  the  door,  turned 
around  and  shouted  to  me,  "How  much  did  you 
get  for  this?"  At  the  conclusion  of  the  service 
my  newly-made  Christian  friends  gathered  about 
me,  and  showered  upon  me  the  heartiest  congrat- 
ulations coupled  with  the  most  confident  pre- 
dictions of  a  happy  life  both  here  and  hereafter. 

As  a  matter  of  fact,  both  those  who  cheered  and 
those  who  jeered  were  mistaken. 

By  this  time  I  dare  say,  those  well-meaning 
'Christian  friends  will  readily  admit  that  they 
were  mistaken  in  predicting  that  baptism  would 
bring  sunshine  and  happiness  into  my  life;  and 
if  my  present  testimony  ever  reaches  their  eyes 
they  may  learn  the  reason  why  their  forecast  of 
happiness  was  bound  to  remain  a  pious  wish. 

The  admission  of  having  been  mistaken  will 


My  Life  as  a  Convert  39 

not  so  readily,  however,  be  made  by  those  who 
shouted  at  me,  "How  much  did  you  get  for  this?" 
The  reason  is  obvious.  It  is  the  most  natural 
thing  in  the  world  to  assume  that  a  Jew  becomes 
a  Christian  because  of  financial  inducements. 

Q.  Did  you  receive  any  money,  or  was  there 
any  promise  of  money  made  to  you  at  the  time 
of  your  baptism? 

A.  Decidedly  not.  There  was  not  a  cent  given 
to  me,  nor  was  there  any  promise  of  money  made 
to  me  at  the  time  of  my  baptism.  Financial  con- 
siderations had  as  little  to  do  with  my  joining 
the  Christian  church  as  they  had  with  my  leaving 
it.  I  am  fully  aware  that  the  burden  of  proof 
is  on  him  who  claims  to  be  an  exception  to  the 
rule.  But  where  shall  I  look  for  proofs?  It  is 
impossible  for  me  to  produce  positive  and  direct 
evidence  in  support  of  my  statement.  What  I 
can  do  is  to  point  out  some  facts  which  may  serve 
as  circumstantial  evidence  in  my  favor.  Let  me 
mention  two  such  facts. 

(1)  Immediately  after  my  baptism  I  entered 
the  Chicago  Theological  Seminary  and  there 
lived  for  three  years  the  frugal  life  of  a  poor 


40        A  Missionary's  Return  to  Judaism 

student.     Does  this  look  like  the  act  of  one  who 
is  anxious  to  make  money? 

(2)  It  is  reasonable  to  assume  that  a  man  who 
from  mercenary  motives  changes  his  religion  is 
not  burdened  with  a  very  sensitive  conscience, 
and  is  not  likely  to  resist  a  strong  temptation  to 
make  money,  even  if  he  has  to  use  underhand 
methods.  Now,  during  the  whole  of  my  Christian 
career  I  never  baptized  a  Jew.  I  might  have 
doubled  or  trebled  my  income  by  the  baptism 
of  only  one  Jew,  but  my  conscience  would  not  let 
me. 

Q.  Well,  then,  what  led  you  to  be  baptized? 
T_  A.  The  plain  truth  is  that  I  made  an  awful 
mistake,  a  terrible  blunder,  but  it  was  an  error 
of  judgment,  not  of  the  heart. 
/At  the  time  I  joined  the  Christian  church  I 
had  no  intention  of  deceiving  anyone.  I  was 
deceived  myself,  I  stumbled,  because  I  was  run- 
ning too  fast;  I  missed  my  aim,  because  I  was 
aiming  too  high. 

My  state  of  mind  was  somewhat  similar  to  that 
of  a  man  who  finds  himself  on  the  high  seas  in 
a  leaking  boat,  which  threatens  to  capsize  at  any 


My  Life  as  a  Convert  41 

moment.  In  his  plight,  another  boat,  looking 
staunch  and  seaworthy,  looms  up  before  his 
straining  eyes.  His  fears  magnify  a  thousand 
times  the  frailty  of  his  own  and  the  staunchness 
of  the  other  boat,  and  he  yields  to  the  natural 
impulse  of  saving  himself  by  jumping  into  the 
other  boat. 

^  Even  so  it  was  with  me.  I  had  become  imbued 
with  the  idea  that  my  boat  of  faith  was  doomed 
— that  Judaism  could  no  longer  resist  the  buffet- 
ing of  the  winds  and  waves  of  the  modern  spirit, 
when  there  appeared  before  my  longing  eyes  the 
magnificent  looking  Christian  boat  of  faith,  and 
I  boarded  it  in  the  hope  that  I  should  find  there 
the  things  I  missed  in  Judaism. 

As  far  as  I  can  remember  after  the  lapse  of 
more  than  twenty  years,  there  were  two  points 
in  particular  that  made  me  dissatisfied  with 
Judaism  and  infatuated  with  Christianity.  For 
one  thing,  I  missed  in  Judaism  the  broad  and 
liberal  spirit  which,  I  was  led  to  believe,  char- 
acterizes the  Christian  religion.  I  had  come  to 
hate  Ghetto  walls,  whether  made  of  brick  or  of 
ideas.    I  yearned  to  call  every  man  brother,  and 


42        A  Missionary's  Return  to  Judaism 

have  my  heart  beat  in  unison  with  that  of  all 
humanity.  Well  do  I  remember  the  glowing  en- 
thusiasm I  felt  on  reading  for  the  first  time  the 
following  passages:  "There  can  be  neither  Jew 
nor  Greek,  there  can  be  neither  bond  nor  free, 
there  can  be  no  male  and  female;  for  ye  are  all 
one  man  in  Christ  Jesus."  (Gal.  3:28.)  "For 
he  is  our  peace,  who  made  both  one,  and  brake 
down  the  middle  wall  of  partition."  (Eph.  2 :14.)  ^ 
Another  source  of  my  dissatisfaction  with 
Judaism  was  what  is  called,  in  theological  par- 
lance, its  "legalism."  By  this  is  meant  the  stress 
Judaism  lays  upon  the  observance  of  "cold,  legal 
forms,"  which,  it  is  claimed,  tend  to  deaden  the 
heart.     Now,  in  my  transition  from  the  strict 


lA  more  careful  consideration  of  these  passag-es  lessens 
the  surface  impression  they  give  of  a  universal  brotherhood 
of  man,  inasmuch  as  the  bond  of  unity  is  limited  to 
those  who  believe  in  Christ.  Around  this  wall  of  par- 
tition between  believers  and  unbelievers  there  have 
been  raging  the  fiercest  and  bloodiest  wars  recorded  in 
history.  Consider  also  this  :  While  this  Christian  wall  of 
partition  between  believer  and  unbeliever  remains — ac- 
cording to  the  teaching  of  orthodox  Christian  theology — 
so  fixed  and  immovable  that  even  death  itself  will  not 
break  it  down,  Jewish  theology  takes  a  broader  view  and 
lets  the  barriers  down  after  death.  A  well-known  maxim 
of  the  Eabbis  says :  "The  pious  ones  among  the  Gentiles 
will  have  a  share  in  the  world  to  come."  (Tosefta  San- 
hedrin,  chap.  XII.) 


My  Life  as  a  Convert  43 

orthodoxy  of  my  boyhood  to  Keform  Judaism, 
I  had  gradually  dropped  most  of  the  Jewish 
forms  and  ceremonies.  I  had  come  to  look  upon 
them  as  burdensome  and  out  of  harmony  with 
our  enlightened  age.  Yet  I  was  constantly 
haunted  by  the  difficulty  of  drawing  the  line  be- 
tween things  essential  and  things  non-essential 
in  Judaism.  I  felt  no  satisfaction  in  following 
the  example  of  a  certain  divine  who  said :  "When 
I  meet  a  difficult  passage  in  the  Bible,  I  look  the 
difficulty  boldly  in  the  face  and — pass  on."  Now, 
when  I  began  to  read  the  New  Testament,  I  was 
deeply  impressed  by  the  strong  denunciations  of 
forms  and  ceremonies  I  found  in  its  pages,  and 
I  became  imbued  with  the  idea  that  Christianity 
was  a  religion  that  prescribes  no  set  forms  and 
ceremonies,  but  instead  lays  stress  upon  right 
living. 

y  With  all  due  respect  for  Christianity  I  cannot 
help  saying  that  this  bright  picture  of  the 
Christian's  freedom  from  forms  and  ceremonies 
is  not  true  to  life.  Look  at  the  Roman  and 
Greek  Catholic  churches,  which  out-Talmud  the 
Talmud  in  their  rigid  insistence  upon  the  ob- 


44         A  Missionary's  Return  to  Judaism 

servance  of  countless  forms  and  ceremonies. 
Observe  also  the  large  element  of  "legalism" 
that  prevails  in  the  Protestant  churches.  It  is 
this  very  legalism  that  is  the  primary  cause  of 
the  division  of  Protestant  Christianity  into  about 
one  hundred  different  sects.  The  Baptists,  for 
instance,  separate  from  other  Christians  on  the 
mode  of  baptism,  the  Presbyterians  on  the  mode 
of  Church  government,  etc.,  etc. 

Heinrich    Heine    facetiously    referred    to    the 
paltry  points  of  Talmudic  discussion  in  his  oft 
quoted  remark  of  "the  fatal  egg  that  was  laid  on 
the  Sabbath."    In  the  Christian  theologies  Heine 
might  have  found  basketfuls  of  such  eggs. 

It  is  worthy  of  note,  however,  that  when  the 
Rabbis  fought  good  and  hard  about  "legalistic" 
points,  it  was  only  with  "the  sword  of  the  spirit," 
while  Christian  theologians  often  caused  nations 
to  take  up  the  sword  against  each  other  in  de- 
fense of  some  "legalistic"  point. 

Q.  Were  you  examined  before  your  baptism 
as  to  your  knowledge  and  belief  in  the  articles 
of  faith  held  by  the  Christian  Church? 

A.     I  was  not.     It  was  assumed  that  I  knew 


My  Life  as  a  Convert  45 

and  believed  them.  Nor  did  I  examine  myself 
much  on  the  points  of  Christian  belief.  "^  I  had 
become  so  fascinated  by  the  outstanding  bright 
features  of  Christianity  that  I  did  not  trouble 
myself  to  inquire  too  deeply  into  its  doctrines  of 
faith,  which  for  the  time  being  I  accepted  at 
their  face  value,  as  millions  and  millions  of  in- 
t^elligent  people  do,  hoping  that  by  and  by  I 
should  be  able  to  study  those  doctrines  thorough- 
ly, and  have  all  doubts  and  difficulties  settled. 
I  was  encouraged  in  this  hope  by  the  fact  pointed 
out  to  me  that  some  Jews  of  great  learning  had 
become  zealous  Christians,  devoting  their  talent 
to  the  spread  of  their  adopted  faith.  Books  and 
tracts  written  by  these  men  were  assiduously 
brought  to  my  notice  by  a  Jewish  missionary  I 
had  come  in  contact  with,  and  they  generally  in- 
fluenced me,  not  so  much  by  their  contents,  as 
by  the  evidence  they  furnished  that  scholarly 
Jews  could  be  believing  Christians. 

Q.  How  did  you  bring  yourself  to  accept  the 
dogmas  of  the  Christian  church,  especially  that 
of  the  Trinity? 

A.     The  Christian  ministers  with  whom  I  had 


46         A  Missionary's  Return  to  Judaism 

come  in  contact  said  very  little  about  the  creed 
of  the  church,  'they  dwelt  almost  exclusively  on 
the  glories  and  triumphs  of  Christianity.  It  was 
not  until  I  entered  the  Seminary,  and  had  begun 
to  study  the  articles  of  faith,  that  I  became  aware 
of  the  vast  and  amazing  amount  of  faith  required 
of  a  true  Christian  believer.  True,  I  ought  to 
have  more  carefully  inquired  into  the  doc- 
trines of  the  faith  I  was  about  to  profess,  but, 
as  I  said  before,  I  had  fallen  in  love  with  Chris- 
tianity, and  when  a  man  is  in  love,  he  naturally 
prefers  to  talk  with  his  beloved  on  topics  that  do 
not  arouse  opposition  and  disclose  disagreements. 

Of  course,  in  a  general  way,  I  knew  that 
Christians  believed  in  a  Trinity.  But  I  persuaded 
myself  that  this  was  after  all  not  an  insurmount- 
able difficulty.  I  reasoned  somewhat  like  this: 
True,  Christians  profess  a  belief  in  a  Trinity, 
but  at  the  same  time  they  profess  to  believe  in 
the  Unity  of  God.  Now,  if  intelligent  Christians 
have  found  it  possible  to  harmonize  this  con- 
tradiction in  some  way  or  other,  why  should  I 
not  be  able  to  do  likewise? 

The  fallacy  of  this  reasoning,  as  I  found  out 


My  Life  as  a  Convert  47 

when  it  was  too  late,  lay  in  overlooking  a  very 
important  fact.  It  is  this :  a  man  born  and  bred 
in  a  religious  faith  is  in  a  different  position  from 
him  who  is  only  a  child  of  the  faith  by  adoption. 
A  line  of  reasoning  satisfying  to  the  one  may 
be  quite  unsatisfactory  to  the  other.  In  matters 
of  faith  the  logic  of  the  head  is  never  pure  reason. 
It  is  tinged  with  logic  that  comes  from  the  heart, 
which  has  a  logic  of  its  own. 

Moreover,  while  one  born  in  the  faith  is  al- 
lowed the  widest  latitude  in  his  efforts  to  recon- 
cile his  faith  with  reason,  as  indeed  many  a 
Christian  minister  preaches  with  a  great  deal  of 
"mental  reservation,"  there  is  no  such  concession 
made  to  one  who  adopts  a  faith,  and  especially 
a  convert  from  Judaism,  more  than  another  eon- 
vert,  is  expected  to  swallow  his  faith  whole  or 
not  take  it  at  all. 

Q.  How  could  you  join  a  Church  which  per- 
secuted your  ancestors  for  centuries? 

A.  The  Christians  with  whom  I  affiliated  were 
not  the  kind  that  did  or  would  persecute  the 
Jews.  In  fact,  the  Congregational  denomination 
which  I  joined  was  not  in  existence  during  the 


48         A  Missionary's  Return  to  Judaism 

Middle  Ages,  and  its  members  professed  a  re- 
ligion of  love  for  all  men,  and  looked  with  horror 
upon  the  outrages  committed  in  the  past  in  the 
name  of  Christianity,  from  which  their  own 
ancestors  suffered  no  less  than  mine.  Besides, 
it  would  be  unjust  and  unreasonable  to  blame 
them  for  what  their  ancestors  did.  "The  fathers 
have  eaten  sour  grapes,  and  shall  the  teeth  of 
the  children  be  set  on  edge?"  If  people  were 
forever  to  remember  the  wrongs  inflicted  on  their 
own  ancestors  by  their  neighbors'  ancestors,  old 
feuds  would  have  to  be  kept  up  forever,  and  there 
would  be  small  chance  for  social  peace  and  har- 
mony. 

Q.  How  is  it  that  you  were  not  restrained 
from  taking  the  final  step  by  the  fear  of  grieving 
your  aged  father? 

A.  This  fear  made  me  hesitate,  but  it  was 
silenced  by  the  hope  that  my  father,  living  a 
secluded  life  in  a  small  town  of  Hungary,  would 
never  hear  of  the  matter.  Indeed,  for  many 
years  after  my  baptism  we  continued  to  corre- 
spond, and  I  would  send  him  occasional  tokens 
of    love.      But    the    unspeakable    meanness    of 


My  Life  as  a  Convert  49 

heartless  gossipers  disclosed  my  misstep  to  him, 
and  the  old  man  went  to  his  grave,  at  the  age 
of  ninety-five,  with  an  added  burden  of  sorrow. 

I  cannot  help  confessing,  though,  that  the 
image  of  my  father  would  often  rise  before  my 
mental  vision,  and  the  contemplation  of  his 
beautiful  life  had  no  little  share  in  encouraging 
me  and  spurring  me  on  to  escape  from  the  false 
position  I  was  in. 

Q.     What  did  you  do  after  your  baptism? 

A.  Soon  after  my  baptism  I  entered  the 
Chicago  Theological  Seminary,  an  institution 
connected  with  the  Congregational  denomination 
(the  Congregationalists  number  about  1,000,000 
communicants  and  are  in  creed  and  doctrine  very 
much  like  the  Presbyterians).  I  remained  there 
for  three  years  pursuing  the  regular  course  of 
studies,  and  was  graduated  with  the  degree  of 
Bachelor  of  Divinity. 

Like  the  other  students,  I  had  a  room  in  the 
dormitory,  and  took  my  meals  outside.  As  a 
student's  stipend,  about  |300  per  year,  does  not 
permit  patronizing  high-priced  restaurants,  I  had 
to  content  myself  with  fare  of  a  kind  which  was 


50        A  Missionary's  Return  to  Judaism 

imsopliisticated  by  culinary  art  and  refinemeni. 
The  Sundays,  however,  brought  a  welcome  re- 
lief from  the  daily  grind  of  theological  studies 
and  gastronomical  failures,  through  the  hospi- 
tality extended  to  me  in  Christian  homes,  where 
I  was  treated  with  much  kindness  and  considera- 
tion, not  in  spite  of  being  a  Jew,  but  because  of 
it.  For  there  are  some  Christians  who  are 
peculiarly  fond  of  the  Jewish  people  and  endow 
them  with  all  the  virtues  imaginable. 

On  entering  the  Seminary  I  threw  myself  into 
theological  studies  with  zeal  and  enthusiasm.  I 
was  full  of  hope  that  three  years  of  thorough 
study  would  make  me  well-grounded  in  the 
Christian  faith,  and  that  I  should  emerge  from 
the  Seminary  a  true  and  sincere  believer  and 
preacher  of  the  Gospel.  There  were  some  periods 
in  my  Seminary  life  when  this  hope  seemed  to  be 
near  realization;  but  like  a  will-o'-the-wisp,  it 
ever  receded,  and  at  the  end  of  the  three  years 
it  was  still  a  mere  hope. 

Q.     What  did  you  do  after  graduation? 

A.  After  being  graduated  from  the  Seminary 
in  1894,  two  courses  lay  open  before  me :  either 


My  Life  as  a  Convert  51 

to, settle  down  as  a  regular  pastor  of  a  congre- 
gation, or  to  take  up  missionary  work  among 
the  Jews.  The  first  would  have  been  more  to  my 
liking,  but  I  did  not  feel  strong  enough  in  the 
faith  to  enter  upon  it.  The  regular  pastoral 
work  requires  a  man  to  be  religiously  tuned  up 
all  the  time,  and  ready  to  respond  to  the  beck 
and  call  of  his  parishioners.  I  did  not  trust  my- 
self to  perform  the  various  Christian  ceremonies 
used  at  baptisms,  marriages,  and  funerals  in  a 
devout,  believing  spirit,  and  to  go  through  them 
in  a  perfunctory  manner,  as  many  a  minister 
does,  would  have  been  irksome  and  distasteful. 
So  I  chose  the  alternative  that  demands  no 
pastoral  duties  except  preaching.  Accordingly, 
I  started  my  first  missionary  work  in  1894,  in 
Boston,  Mass.,  the  same  city  in  which,  fourteen 
years  later,  I  repudiated  the  whole  missionary 
business. 

The  very  first  thing  I  did  on  starting  my  work 
in  Boston  was  to  have  cards  printed,  which  an- 
nounced, in  fat  type,  that  no  financial  aid  of  any 
sort  would  be  given  at  my  mission,  "it  being  a 
well-known  fact  that  the  Jews  take  good  care  of 


52         A  Missionarif'S  Return  to  Judaism, 

their  deserving  poor,  and  the  undeserving  need 
not  apply  here."  In  spite  of  this,  the  undeserving 
did  come,  expecting  to  be  rewarded  for  coming. 
They  regarded  my  printed  announcement  as  a 
mere  trick  or  a  jolvc,  for  they  could  not  conceive 
of  a  missionarv  trying  to  conduct  his  business 
without  giving  financial  help  to  those  who  help 
him  in  his  business.  When  it  was  discovered 
that  my  announcement  meant  what  it  said,  they 
stayed  away,  and  the  mission  was  left  "as  a  booth 
in  the  vineyard,  and  as  a  cucumber  lodge  in  the 
garden."  I  gave  up  the  work  after  a  trial  of  five 
months,  although  the  Congregational  church  was 
willing  enough  to  continue  the  work  as  a  new 
departure  in  mission  work. 

Having  failed  in  my  efforts  at  reforming  the 
missionary  methods,  I  decided  to  quit  the  field 
altogether,  and  I  told  my  Christian  friends  that 
I  intended  to  enter  upon  a  business  career.  I 
left  for  New  York  City,  hoping  that  some  of  my 
relatives  living  there  might  help  me  to  find  an 
honest  way  of  making  a  living.  Instead,  they 
received  me  rather  coldly .^hey  could  not  under- 
stand how  I  could  have  been  so  foolish  as  to  give 


My  Life  as  a  Convert  53 

up  a  missionary  career,  wliicli,  in  their  opinion, 
was  the  sure  road  to  wealth. 

After  a  few  months  of  fruitless  search  for 
work,  want  and  hunger  stared  me  in  the  face, 
and  I  returned  to  Boston,  not  to  engage  in  mis- 
sionary work,  l)ut  to  look  for  some  secular  work. 
I  soon  found  employment  as  a  book-agent,  the 
refuge  of  many  a  disabled  minister.  Among  the 
books  I  was  engaged  in  selling  was  a  new  edition 
of  the  Bible.  This  naturally  brought  me  in  con- 
tact with  Christian  people.  From  selling  the 
Bible  to  talking  about  it  was  a  short  step,  and 
before  I  fully  realized  it,  I  was  giving  lectures  on 
the  Bible  in  various  churches. 

During  the  four  years  that  followed  I  led  a 
wandering  life  as  a  lecturer,  and  visited  most  of 
the  large  cities  of  the  country.  My  principal 
lecture  was  entitled  ''The  Hebrews  of  To-Day." 

I  am  far  from  being  proud  of  it.  And  yet  I 
must  speak  of  it,  as  some  idea  of  its  contents  is 
necessary  to  the  better  understanding  of  ''Mv 
Life  as  a  Convert." 

I  quote  the  leaflet  which  I  used  to  send  to 
ministers  in  advance  of  my  coming  to  a  town: 


54        A  Missionary's  Return  to  Judaism 
f list r net i DC,  Interesting 


THOUSANDS    OF   CHEISTIANS 
Have  Heaed  With  Pleasure  and  Peofit  the  Lecture  on 

"THE  HEBREWS  OF  TO-DAY," 

BY    THE 

Eev.  Samuel  Feeuder,  B.D. 

The  following  is  a  brief  analysis  of  the  lecture  : 

1.  The  present  religious  condition  of  the  Jews  and  the 
difference  between  the  "orthodox"  and  the  "reform"  Jews. 

2.  Why  it  is  that  Christianity  is  making  but  slow 
progress  among  the  Jews. 

3.  The  personal  experience  of  the  speaker,  and  how  he 
was  led  to  see  the  truth  as  it  is  in  Jesus. 

4.  The  morning  prayer  of  the  devout  Jew.  (Here  the 
speaker  exhibits  the  phylacteries  and  the  garment  men- 
tioned in  Matthew  23:5.  He  also  shows  how  the  Law  is 
read  in  the  synagogues,  and  chants  a  Psalm  in  the  Hebrew 
tongue.) 

5.  Three  reasons  why  Christians  should  love  the  Jews. 

Aim  and  Object 

Mr.  Freuder  does  not  solicit  aid  for  any  society  or  or- 
ganization whatever ;  nor  does  he  come  begging  for  him- 
self. He  comes  on  his  own  responsibility,  and  expects  a 
free-will  offering  in  return  for  the  services  he  renders,  as 
he  believes  that  he  is  doing  a  good  work : 


My  Life  as  a  Convert  55 

1st.  By  making  some  passages  in  Scripture  more  real 
and  luminous  and  thus  strengthening  the  faith  in  the 
Bible. 

2d.  By  bringing  about  a  better  understanding  between 
Jew  and  Gentile,  and  thus  preparing  the  way  for  the  time 
when  the  people  whom  the  Lord  loved  shall  unite  with  the 
people  who  love  the  Lord. 

On  the  surface,  the  fourth  point  of  my  lecture 
is  open  to  severe  criticism,  and  I  was  most 
strongly  denounced  for  it  by  those  who  did  not 
hear  my  lecture  but  only  heard  of  it.  In  ex- 
planation I  would  say  this : 

There  is  a  Latin  proverb  that  says:  "When 
two  do  the  same  thing,  it  is  not  the  same  thing.  ' 
If  some  ignorant,  unscrupulous  convert  goes 
about  exhibiting  the  Tallith  and  Tefillin,  he  is 
likely  to  do  it  in  a  way  that  will  create  a  feeling 
of  contempt  for  things  held  sacred  by  the  Jews. 
It  was  not  so  with  me.  I  showed  those  parapher- 
nalia of  Jewish  worship,  not  to  satisfy  idle 
curiosity,  but  to  instruct  and  inform  the  hearers. 
And  I  did  it  in  a  most  reverential  spirit,  as 
Christian  ministers  and  daily  press  reporters 
have  testified.  I  may  mention  here,  that  a  min- 
ister told  me,   after  complimenting  me  on  my 


56         A  Missionary's  Return  to  Judaism 

lecture,  that  lie  at  first  was  in  doubt  about  letting;: 
me  speak  to  his  people,  because  he  had  been 
present  at  a  lecture  given  by  a  prominent  un- 
converted rabbi  of  Baltimore,  during  the  course 
of  which  the  rabbi,  exhibiting  the  Tallith  and 
Tefillin,  spoke  in  so  sarcastic  a  vein  of  those 
who  still  use  them,  tliat  he,  the  Christian  minis- 
ter, was  offended.  The  rabbi  evidently  had  de- 
sired to  magnify  his  reform  attitude  by  belittling 
orthodoxy. 

There  can  be  no  doubt,  then,  that  the  way  I 
exhibited  the  Tallith  and  Tefillin  was  in  keeping 
with  the  whole  spirit  of  my  lecture,  which  was 
that  of  love  for  the  Jew. 

In  the  year  1900  I  made  another  attempt  to 
escape  from  the  anomalous  life  of  a  converted 
Jew.  Having  saved  up  a  few  hundred  dollars, 
I  was  full  of  hope  that  I  should  succeed  this  time. 
I  adopted  a  different  method,  too.  While  four 
years  before,  I  simply  slunk  away  like  a  beaten 
dog,  I  thought  I  would  this  time  not  hide  myself 
away,  but  rather  seek  out  a  few  representative 
Jews  and  ask  their  counsel  and  aid.  A  prominent 
orthodox  Rabbi  on  whom  I  called  received  me  in 


Mij  Life  as  a  Convert  57 

a  ln'otherlv  wav,  admonished  me  to  remain  stead- 
fast  in  my  good  resolve,  and  promised  me  his 
help  in  getting  some  kind  of  work.  Quite  dif- 
ferent was  the  reception  accorded  me  by  another 
Rabbi,  who  is  the  head  of  a  very  prominent  Re- 
form congregation.  This  Rabbi,  after  giving  me 
a  severe  tongue  lashing,  asked  me  bluntly :  "How 
much  money  have  you  got?"  I  told  him.  "What 
can  you  do  with  a  few  hundred  dollars?"  he 
asked  derisively.  "You'd  better  stay  with  the 
Christians  until  you  have  saved  up  some  more 
money." 

Ignoring  this  Rabbi's  advice,  which  neither  a 
good  Christian  nor  a  good  Jew  would  have  of- 
fered, I  looked  about  for  work.  After  many 
weeks  of  fruitless  search  I  found  a  position  as  a 
waiter,  or  rather  as  an  omnibus,  a  waiter's  as- 
sistant. For  about  a  month  all  went  well;  then 
one  of  my  knees  gave  out.  I  tried  to  find  other 
employment,  but  failed.  Homeless  and  penniless, 
broken  down  in  health  and  spirit,  I  could  not 
resist  the  temptation  to  enter  again  the  lecture 
field. 

After  this  second  failure  I  gave  up  all  hope  of 


68        A  Missionary's  Return  to  Judaism 

ever  getting  out  of  tlie  environments  I  was  placed 
in,  and,  resigning  myself  to  what  seemed  to  be 
my  fate,  I  determined  to  make  my  life,  as  far  as 
possible,  conform  with  ethical  standards. 

A  year  or  so  later  I  transferred  my  church 
membership  from  the  Congregational  Church  to 
the  Protestant  Episcopal  Church,  which  church 
I  thought  was  better  for  a  man  situated  as  I  was, 
because  in  the  first  place  it  shows  a  special  rever- 
ence for  Jewish  customs  and  traditions,  and  has 
always  cherished  a  feeling  of  admiration  and 
love  for  the  Jewish  people,  and  second,  because 
it  allows  greater  freedom  in  religious  matters, 
its  platform  being  broad  enough  for  the  most 
rigid  orthodox  and  the  most  advanced  thinker  to 
meet  thereon  without  crowding  or  jostling. 

After  one  year's  study  at  the  Episcopal  Divinity 
School  of  Philadelphia,  I  was  ordained  as  a 
deacon,  in  1906,  and  served  as  such  in  the  Church 
of  the  Advent  of  Philadelphia  for  about  a  year. 
Then  I  went  to  New  York  City,  where  I  became 
a  member  of  the  clerical  staff  of  Grace  Episcopal 
Church. 

But  hard  as  I  tried  to  quiet  my  conscience  and 


My  Life  as  a  Convert  59 

persuade  myself  that  I  was  doing  some  good  iu 
the  world,  I  had  no  rest.  I  was  miserable  and 
unhappy.  In  vain  I  endeavored  to  silence  the 
accusing  voice  within  me.  I  could  not  shut  my 
ears  to  the  voice  of  my  father,  with  its  echo  of 
three  thousand  years,  calling  me  back  to  the 
sacred  hearth  of  Judaism  around  which  the  holy 
and  noble  aspirations  of  my  childhood  centered. 
When,  therefore,  the  invitation  came  to  me  to 
attend  the  Boston  meeting  of  Jewish  mission- 
aries, I  seized  the  opportunity  to  declare  myself 
in  a  way  which  would  make  a  recall  impossible. 

Maybe  the  way  I  did  it  was,  as  a  critic  re- 
marked, "somewhat  theatrical,"  but  I  felt  that  I 
must  make  an  open  declaration,  so  as  to  burn  all 
bridges  behind  me  and  put  myself  out  of  the 
missionary  camp  for  all  time  to  come.  How  well 
I  succeeded  in  this  may  be  seen  in  the  first  chap- 
ter of  this  book. 

Too  long,  perhaps,  I  have  dwelt  upon  incidents 
in  my  life  as  a  convert,  which  after  all  is  in  itself 
of  little  importance,  except  as  it  shows  my  qual- 
ification to  testify  concerning  the  methods  and 
men  employed  by  the  missions  to  the  Jews. 


CHAPTER  V 

MISSIONARY   AYORK  AMONG  ADULTS 

Christianity  is  pre-eminently  a  missionary 
religion.  At  its  very  beginning  the  disciples 
were  commanded  to  "preach  the  gospel  to  every 
creature,"  and  this  command  was  often  carried 
out  by  later  disciples  with  so  much  zest  and  zeal 
that  they  violated  the  very  teachings  of  the  gospel 
they  proclaimed.  More  especially  was  this  the 
case  in  preaching  the  Gospel  to  the  Jews,  when, 
alas!  too  often  the  pyre  was  substituted  for  the 
pulpit,  and  the  hangman  for  the  spokesman. 

Happily  these  times  have  passed  away,  and 
the  Christian  missionary  spirit  works  through 
deeds  of  kindness  and  love.  Nowadays  the 
methods  used  in  converting  Jew  or  Gentile  must 
be  able  to  stand  the  test  of  decency  and  honesty 

60 


Missionary  Work  Among  Adults  61 

in  order  to  be  approved  by  an  enlightened  Chris- 
tian. 

Do  the  special  missions  to  the  Jews  come  up 
to  this  indispensable  requirement? 

There  is  no  use  mincing  words.  The  whole 
Jewish  missionary  business  as  conducted  by  pro- 
fessional converts  is  steeped  in  dishonesty  and 
trickery.  To  it  may  be  applied  the  words  of 
Isaiah,  ^Trom  the  sole  of  the  foot  even  unto  the 
head  there  is  no  soundness  in  it."  It  is  rotten 
from  core  to  circumference,  from  top  to  bottom. 

It  is  only  fair  to  state,  that  most,  ^f  not  all, 
of  the  Christian  supporters  of  Jewish  missions 
are  unaware  of  the  fraudulent  nature  of  the  work 
done,  and  have  no  inkling  of  its  evil  effects  upon 
those  who  happen  to  fall  into  the  missionary's 
net.  Their  missionary  zeal  makes  them  blind 
and  deaf_to__anythingjthat  might  disturb  their 
sweet  delusion,  that  they  are  instrumental  in 
bringing  the  glad  tidings  to  "the  lost  sheep  of 
the  house  of  Israel."  They  come  to  look  upon 
any  criticism  of  the  work  or  the  workers  as  in- 
spired by  Satan  himself,  who,  in  the  language 
of  prayer  meetings,  "trembles  at  the  sound  of 


62        A  Missionary's  Return  to  Judaism 

the  Gospel  and  strives  with  all  his  might  to 
hinder  its  triumphant  progress." 

This  easygoing  and  self-complacent  attitude 
of  his  patrons  is  taken  advantage  of  by  the  Jew- 
ish missionary;  and  whenever  his  character  or 
the  methods  of  his  w^ork  are  attacked,  he  prompt- 
ly assumes  the  martyr  role,  casts  his  eyes  heaven- 
ward, bows  his  head,  and  moves  his  lips  as  if  in 
prayer  for  his  persecutors.  For  this  reason,  I 
have  thought  it  best  not  to  give  the  names  of 
those  whose  doings  will  be  laid  bare  in  the  fol- 
lowing pages,  lest  some  of  them  may  be  benefited 
financially  by  my  mentioning  their  names.  I 
know  of  the  case  of  a  Jewish  missionary  who  was 
accused  of  various  offences.  His  best  friend,  or 
"angel,"  to  use  a  theatrical  expression,  instead 
of  investigating  the  charges,  sent  him  a  big  check 
with  this  quotation  from  the  New  Testament: 
"Blessed  are  ye  when  men  shall  reproach  you 
and  persecute  you,  and  say  all  manner  of  evil 
against  you  falsely,  for  my  sake."  This  over- 
confiding  Christian  must  have  overlooked  the 
word  "falsely"  in  the  text  quoted. 

Another  and  more  cogent  reason  for  my  sup- 


Missionary  Work  Among  Adults  63 

pressing  the  names  of  the  professional  converts 
is  this:  Suppose  one  of  those  unfortunates 
plucked  up  courage  enough  to  quit  the  mission- 
ary game  and  be  a  man  again,  would  not  the  fact 
that  his  name  and  his  doings  have  been  published 
in  permanent  book-form  prove  a  discouraging 
factor  in  his  struggle  for  freedom?  Surely,  of 
all  men  I  should  be  the  last  to  put  the  slightest 
obstacle  in  the  road  of  anybody  who  is  striving 
to  find  his  way  back  to  the  fold. 

One  more  preliminary  remark,  and  I  shall 
place  myself  again,  as  it  were,  on  the  witness 
stand. 

My  testimony  refers  only  to  those  Jewish  mis- 
sions which  are  operated  in  this  country.  Of 
them  I  can  unfortunately  say,  "All  of  these  I 
saw;  part  of  them  I  was."  Of  the  missionary 
work  in  England  and  other  parts  of  the  world, 
I  have  merely  a  hearsay  knowledge,  and  there- 
fore I  do  not  feel  competent  to  testify  concern- 
ing them.  But  this  much  I  may  say :  I  have  met 
several  Jewish  missionaries  from  abroad,  and 
have  become  intimately  acquainted  with  a  num- 
ber of  the  converts  they  have  turned  out,  and  it 


G4         A  3Iissionanjs  Return  to  Judaism 

does  not  appear  to  me  that  the  foreign-made 
brand  of  Jewish  missionaries  is  in  any  wise 
superior  to  that  produced  in  this  country. 

Q.  How  many  Jewish  missions  are  there  in 
the  world? 

A.  According  to  the  latest  missionary  statis- 
tics there  are  more  than  fifty  societies  engaged 
in  the  work  of  converting  the  Jews  to  Christian- 
ity. The  membership  of  these  societies  is  com- 
posed of  those  who  are  members  of  various 
Protestant  churches.  The  Roman  Catholic 
church  has  at  present  no  special  missions  to  the 
Jews.  Of  course,  she  is  now  as  eager  as  ever  to 
take  the  Jew  to  her  holy  bosom,  but  for  some 
reason  she  does  not  set  up  a  special  machinery 
for  the  saving  of  Jewish  souls. 

As  for  the  Greek  Catholic  church,  why  should 
she  spend  money  and  sweet  words  on  the  con- 
version of  the  Jew?  The  old-fashioned  method 
of  driving  the  Jew  into  the  church  by  fear  and 
force  is  good  enough  for  her.  The  legal  disabil- 
ities of  the  Jew  in  Russia,  accentuated  by  an 
occasional  pogrom,  bring  to  her  as  many  con- 
verts— and  probably  just  as  sincere  ones — as  are 


Missionanj  Work  Among  Adults  65 

made  by  the  gentler  methods  adopted  by  more 
civilized  Christians. 

Q.     What  is  the  number  of  salaried  people  in 
the  employ  of  these  societies? 

Ajjt  Over  five  hundred  paid  agents  or  helpers 
are  reported.  Of  this  number  more  than  half 
are  Jews  by  birth,  who  have  been  converted,  and 
therefore  are  believed  to  be  best  fitted  to  act  as 
bell-wethers,  to  bring  in  the  "lost  sheep  of  the 
house  of  Israel."  The  others,  born  Christians, 
assist  at  the  mission  services,  and  attend  to  the 
administrative  part  of  the  work. 

Q.  What  is  the  number  of  baptisms  reported 
by  these  societies? 

A.  ,  The  total  number  of  baptisms  reported  by 
these  societies  during  the  nineteenth  century 
as  the  results  of  their  work  is  13,400.  How  manv 
of  this  number  were  baptized  more  than  once 
and  how  many  failed  to  stay  ^'baptized"  the  re- 
ports do  not  say. 

Q.     How  many  of  such  societies  are  there  in 
this  country? 

A.     More  than  twenty-five,  or  about  half  of 
the  total  number  of  Jewish  missions  in  the  world 


66         A  Missionary's  Return  to  Judaism 

are  operated  in  this  country.  On  tlie  surface 
this  high  figure  looks  like  a  confirmation  of 
Barnum's  dictum  that  "the  American  people  like 
to  be  humbugged."  The  real  reason  for  the  ex 
istence  of  so  many  societies  in  this  country  lies 
in  the  fact  that  almost  every  large  city  with  a 
big  Jewish  population  has  a  society  of  its  own — 
some  have  more  than  one — which  covers  the  local 
field  only,  while  in  Europe  there  are  some  socie- 
ties that  have  branches  in  different  parts  of  the 
world,  where  the  work  is  carried  on  under  the 
name  and  supervision  of  the  parent  society. 

Q.  How  is  the  money  needed  for  the  work 
raised? 

A.  There  are  several  societies  in  Europe  with 
large  incomes  derived  from  bequests  made  to 
them  by  pious  people.  There  is,  for  instance,  the 
London  Society  for  Promoting  Christianity 
amongst  the  Jews,  the  income  of  which  in  the 
year  1900  was  |233,650,  mostly  from  legacies. 
In  this  country,  however,  there  is  hardly  any 
society  with  an  endowment  fund,  and  the  money 
needed  is  raised  partly  by  regular  annual  sub- 
scriptions made   by   churches  and   individuals, 


Missionary  Work  Among  Adults  67 

and  partly  by  contributions  received  from  the 
Christian  public  at  large.  In  a  few  instances 
the  mission  has  no  regular  subscribers,  and  de- 
pends entirely  on  occasional  offerings.  This  is 
called  in  the  missionary  lingo  "living  by  faith," 
which  means  that  the  poor  missionary  labors 
and  toils  in  the  trusting  faith  that  all  his  needs 
will  be  supplied  by  a  kind  Providence.  His  faith 
is,  however,  not  of  the  resigned  and  inactive  sort. 
On  the  contrary,  he  assiduously  assists  Provi- 
dence, by  urging  all  good  Christians  to  help  him 
in  his  "work  of  faith." 

The  following  is  a  typical  appeal  for  funds 
made  in  behalf  of  a  mission.  Even  the  reference 
to  the  saloon-keeper  is  typical,  as  this  individual 
is  generally  made  to  figure  in  these  appeals,  so 
as  to  "touch"  those  who  would  not  contribute  to 
any  work  that  does  not  in  some  way  or  other 
benefit  the  temperance  cause.  ,.     u       J^ 

X    "OUK  NEEDS." 

A  permanent  Mission  House.  An  Organ,  the  one  now 
in  use  is  borrowed.  A  large  stove.  Money  to  buy  fuel. 
Money  for  rental  of  Mission  Hall,  now  due.  A  saloon- 
keeper is  trying  to  secure  the  building  at  a  higher  rent. 


68         A  Missionary's  Return  to  Judaism 

It  is  most  important  that  tlie  Mission  should  secure  the 
building  by  the  year. 

Money  for  the  printing  of  tracts ;  also  toward  the  sup- 
port of  a  Christian  Jew  who  will  assist  at  the  mission 
and  in  visitation. 

Money  for  relief  work  among  the  poor  refugees  is 
always  needed. 

Desired  also  the  prayers  of  God's  people,  that  these 
pressing  needs  may  be  supplied  out  of  His  abounding 
riches  and  fulness,  and  thus  the  blessed  Kingdom  of  our 
Common  Lord  may  be  hastened. 

"Pray  for  the  peace  of  Jerusalem."    Ps.  122  :6. 

Such  appeals  for  money  are  usually  attached 
to  reports  of  the  mission  work,  which  are  printed 
in  pamphlet  form  or  in  periodicals  published  by 
the  mission.  Since  even  the  most  pious  American 
is,  as  a  rule,  too  practical  to  spend  money  on  mis- 
sion work  that  shows  no  results,  these  reports 
never  fail  to  tell  of  the  great  success  attending 
the  work.  If  there  are  not  actual  conversions  to 
report,  there  are  at  least  some  "earnest  inquirers 
into  the  Truth,''  about  whom  there  are  always 
some  "touching"  stories  to  be  told.  For  instance, 
to  quote  from  such  a  report :  "A  very  pious  and 
learned  Jew  who  is  fully  convinced  of  the  truth, 
told  the  missionarv  that  he  was  afraid  to  let 


Missionari/  Work  Among  Adults  G9 

anTbody  but  the  missionary  know  about  it,  lest 
he  be  persecuted  by  the  Jews'';  or  "Some  poor 
Jewish  family  which  the  missionary  relieyed  by 
paying  the  oyerdue  rent  was  so  oyercome  by  this 
manifestation  of  Christian  loye,  that  the  father, 
with  tears  trickling  down  his  long  beard,  begged 
to  be  given  a  New  Testament  in  Yiddish  so  that 
he  might  study  and  learn  the  source  of  thai 
Christian  loye." 

'{^An  actual  baptism  of  a  Jew  is,  of  course,  re- 
ported with  much  clamor.  The  picture  of  the 
ne^y  convert  is  often  printed,  and  the  circum- 
stances of  his  conversion,  all  of  a  stereotyped 
kind,  are  related  in  a  manner  to  impress  upon 
the  friends  of  the  mission  how  "mightily  the 
Lord  is  working  in  our  midst/'  and  how  "the 
Gospel  is  melting  the  stony  heart  of  Israel."  In 
most  cases,  however,  the  new  "catch"  is  nothing 
much  to  brag  about,  being  neither  flesh,  fish,  nor 
even  good  red  herring,  and  all  that  he  is  good 
for  is  to  be  used  as  bait  in  fishing  for  other 
Jewish  souls. 

Q.     What  are  the  methods  adopted  by  these 
societies  in  their  efforts  to  convert  the  Jews? 


70         A  Missionary's  Return  to  Judaism 

A.  The  agencies  commonly  employed  by  these 
societies  in  the  furtherance  of  their  work  are: 
1.  Preaching  services.  2.  Meetings  for  inquirers. 
3.  Free  Reading  Rooms.  4.  House  to  house 
visitations.     5.  Medical  dispensaries. 

Q.  When  and  where  are  the  preaching  serv- 
ices held? 

A.  Saturday  is  usually  set  apart  for  the 
preaching  services,  because  on  that  day  the  or- 
thodox Jew,  who  is  looked  upon  as  the  most 
hopeful  subject  for  conversion,  is  at  leisure  and 
can  attend.  The  place  of  service  is  also  chosen 
with  an  eye  to  the  orthodox  Jew,  who  would  be 
disinclined  to  enter  a  church  building,  and  there- 
fore the  service  is  held  in  a  public  hall  hired  for 
the  purpose. 

Q.  How  are  the  Jews  invited  to  the  preaching 
services? 

A.  Some  hours  before  the  service  begins  the 
helpers  of  the  mission  distribute,  on  the  street, 
handbills  printed  in  Yiddish,  which  read  like 
this: 


Missionary  Wotk  Among  Adults  71 

A   Derosho    (sermon)    for   Jews.     Eev.  preaches 

every  Saturday  afternoon  at  .  * 

Everybody  w^elcome.  J-^  /  /r^  ^ 

Admission  Free. 

The  wording  of  this  handbill  is  cunningly  de- 
vised. It  does  not  give  the  slightest  intimation 
of  the  real  nature  of  the  meeting  it  advertises. 

It  does  not  say  that  the  Reverend  is  a 

converted  Jew  who  preaches  Christianity,  and 
does  not  even  mention  the  word  "Christian."  And 
whv?  Because  it  is  designed  to  attract  som( 
people  who  would  never  go  to  the  meeting  if  its 
missionary  character  were  made  known  to  them 
beforehand. 

Imagine  a  newly-arrived  immigrant  walking 
on  one  of  the  crowded  streets  of  New  York's 
East  Side.  He  gazes  at  the  strange  faces  round 
about  him,  and  yearns  for  the  familiar  faces  he 
left  behind.  He  is  given  a  handbill  like  the  one 
quoted.  He  grasps  it  eagerly,  stops  to  read  it, 
and  walks  on  still  reading  it  aloud  to  himself. 
He  shakes  his  head  and  reads  it  over  again.  How 
strange,  he  begins  to  murmur,  that  a  Rabbi 
should   advertise  his  Derosho  in   such   a  way. 


72         A  Mh^ionary-8  Return  to  Judaism 

Especially  puzzling  to  him  is  the  announcement 
"Admission  free."  In  the  first  place,  he  argues, 
who  ever  heard  of  paying  to  hear  a  sermon?  And 
in  the  second  place,  even  if  such  payment  were 
customarv  in  this  freak  of  a  countrv,  how  could 
it  be  made  on  the  holy  Sabbath?  He  makes  up 
his  mind  to  see  for  himself  what  this  curious 
thing  is,  and  goes  straightway  to  the  meeting- 
place.  When  he  arrives,  he  finds  an  affable  usher 
at  the  door,  who  receives  him  with  a  welcome 
that  is  warm  and  genuinely  sincere.  I  say  genu- 
inely sincere,  for  no  matter  how  insincere  every- 
thing else  said  or  done  at  the  meeting  may  be,  the 
welcome  given  to  the  newcomer  is  sincere  beyond 
any  doubt.  And  why  shouldn't  it  be?  Apart 
from  the  hope  that  the  stranger  may  become  a 
convert,  his  very  presence  is  a  source  of  comfort 
and  gain,  because  he  helps  to  fill  the  hall  as  well 
as  the  pockets  of  the  missionary. 

The  cordial  handshake  given  to  him,  perhaps 
the  first  he  has  experienced  since  he  set  foot  on 
these  golden  shores,  is  rather  bewildering,  and 
might  well  arouse  the  greenhorn's  suspicions, 
because  at  Jewish  meetings  they  would  not  make 


Missionary  Work  Among  Adults  73 

so  much  fuss  about  a  stranger.  But  his  short 
stay  in  this  land  of  great  possibilities  has  im- 
pressed him  with  the  idea  that  all  things  are 
possible  here,  and  it  may  be  customary  to  wel- 
come a  stranger  in  a  synagogue,  even  if  he  pre- 
sents no  prosperous  appearance. 

He  takes  his  seat  and  soon  discovers  what  kind 
of  a  place  he  is  in.  He  feels  chagrined  and  knows 
not  what  to  do.  If  his  religious  scruples  are 
stronger  than  his  curiosity,  he  hurriedly  leaves 
the  hall,  giving  vent  to  his  outraged  feelings. 
But  the  missionary  does  not  mind  that.  Short- 
lived as  his  attendance  was,  it  nevertheless 
counts,  and  he  is  referred  to  in  the  missionary's 
report  as  one  of  those  "dear  Jewish  brethren  who 
throng  the  hall  eager  to  learn  more  about  the 
gospel  of  Christ." 

Sometimes  the  newcomer's  curiosity  overcomes 
his  religious  scruples,  and  makes  him  stay  to  see 
the  thing  through.  Next  Saturday  he  comes 
again  to  enjoy  the  free  show  and  to  have  the 
pleasure  of  voicing  his  displeasure  after  it  is 
over,  or  even  while  it  is  going  on.  He  comes 
again  and  again,  until  the  novelty  wears  off,  and 


74         A  Missionary's  Return  to  Judaism 

he  finds  another  place  to  spend  his  Sabbath 
afternoons.  It  does,  however,  happen,  thougli 
rarely,  that  he  gets  entangled  in  the  missionary's 
net,  and  in  the  end  pays  dearly  for  accepting  the 
invitation  to  '^a  Sermon  for  Jews,  admission 
free." 

Q.  What  sort  of  people  make  up  the  audi- 
ence at  these  preaching  services? 

A.  Besides  those  who  happen  to  be  attracted 
by  handbills,  there  are  those  who  attend  regu- 
larly every  Saturday.  They  are  mostly  men  be- 
tween eighteen  and  forty  years  of  age.  Some- 
times an  elderly  man  may  be  seen  in  the  audience, 
who,  upon  investigation,  turns  out  to  be  indebted 
to  the  mission  for  some  charity  bestowed  upon 
his  family.  Some  of  them  work  during  the  week, 
and  find  this  a  good  place  to  while  away  Satur- 
day's leisure  time,  while  others,  out  of  work  and 
funds,  find  refuge  here  from  the  heated  pave- 
ments or  the  cold  blasts  of  the  streets.  As  to 
religious  views,  the  audience  is  greatly  diversi- 
fied. Most  of  them  have  received  the  religious 
training  usually  given  in  Eastern  Europe.  They 
know   the   Pentateuch    fairly   well,    have   some 


Missionary  Work  Among  Adults  75 

knowledge  of  the  other  books  of  the  Old  Testa- 
ment, and,  in  some  rare  instances,  a  smattering 
of  the  Talmud.  But  of  the  great  history  of  the 
Jewish  people  extending  over  a  period  of  four 
thousand  years,  they  hardly  know  the  bare  out- 
lines; and  of  the  ethical  truths  of  Judaism  they 
have  only  a  faint  conception.  While  they  nom- 
inally adhere  to  orthodox  ways  and  regulate 
their  daily  living  in  accordance  with  its  require- 
ments, yet  on  slight  temptation  they  become 
rather  lax  and  indifferent. 

There  is  also  in  the  audience  a  sprinkling  of 
so-called  "radicals,"  that  is,  those  who  loudly 
proclaim  their  emancipation  from  all  forms  of 
religion,  the  followers  of  which  they  declare  to 
be  either  hypocrites  or  idiots.  These  "radicals" 
applaud  all  that  the  speakers  say  in  deprecation 
of  orthodox  Judaism,  but  listen  in  sullen  silence 
to  the  praises  of  the  substitute  offered  by  the 
advocates  of  Christianity. 

In  his  reports  of  the  meetings  the  missionary 
does  not  separate  the  sheep  from  the  goats,  and 
he  tells  his  patrons  how  the  Jews  are  crowding 
the  meetings  "yearning  and  thirsting  for  the 
living  waters  of  the  Gospel." 


7(5         .1  Alissionarij's  Return  to  Judaism 

Q.     How  is  the  preaching  service  conducted? 

A.  The  meeting  is  opened  with  song  and 
prayer.  The  singing  being  usually  done  by 
Christian  visitors  who  are  moved  by  the  mission- 
ary spirit  to  help  in  the  work  is  often  very  im- 
pressive, and  is  a  redeeming  feature  in  an  atmos- 
phere surcharged  with  hypocrisy  and  falsehood. 

It  may  not  be  without  interest  to  get  a  glimpse 
of  some  of  these  Christian  helpers  as  they  make 
their  appearance  on  the  platform. 

Here  comes  the  organist,  a  plainly  but  neatly 
dressed  woman  past  thirty.  She  is  employed  in 
a  department  store  owned  by  Jews,  and  therefore 
she  declares  herself  to  be  especially  moved  to 
devote  her  Saturday  half-holiday  to  the  work  of 
converting  the  Jews.  Taking  her  seat  at  the 
little  organ,  she  bows  in  prayer,  writes  down  the 
numbers  of  the  hymns  selected,  and  hands  the 
slip  of  paper  to  the  missionary,  who,  occupying 
the  front  chair,  is  reading  the  Bible  with  one  eye 
and  watching  the  door  with  the  other. 

Of  a  different  type  is  the  lady  just  now  enter- 
ing. She  is  the  wife  of  a  very  rich  man,  and 
looks  every  inch  a  liberal  patron  of  the  mission. 


Missionary  Work  Among  Adults  77 

Tlie  missionary  rises  to  meet  her,  and  putting  on 
his  most  Christian  smile  he  conducts  her  to  the 
largest  and  most  comfortable  chair.  Her  interest 
in  Jewish  missions,  she  says,  was  awakened  bv 
the  fact  that  one  of  her  dearest  girl  friends 
happens  to  have  been  a  Jewess. 

Who  is  this  coming  up  to  the  platform  smiling 
all  over?  He  likes  to  call  himself  "the  happy 
Christian,"  and  is  never  so  happy  as  when  he 
can  tell  people  how  miserable  a  sinner  he  has 
been.  His  smile  never  comes  off  except  when  he 
works  himself  up  to  such  a  height  of  happiness 
that  his  overcharged  feelings  find  relief  in  a 
flood  of  tears. 

This  demonstrative  "happy  Christian"  is 
closely  followed  by  a  dark-complexioned  young 
man  of  about  twenty-five,  wearing  a  scared  look 
and  a  brand  new  suit  of  clothes.  He  takes  a  seat 
in  an  obscure  corner,  and  wipes  his  perspiring 
face.  The  audience  turns  its  gaze  towards  him, 
and  he  is  trying  to  conceal  his  features  with  a 
hymn  book.  This  unhappy  looking  individual, 
a  recent  convert  fi-om  Judaism,  was  baptized 
only  a   IVw  weeks  ago,  and  lie  will  presently  be 


78         A  Missionary's  Return  to  Judaism 

called  upon  to  tell  his  Jewish  brethren  how 
happy  he  has  been  ever  since  he  has  found  the 
Messiah. 

A  tall,  thin,  and  partially  bald  man,  briskly 
steps  on  the  platform,  rushes  to  a  vacant  chair 
and  goes  down  on  his  knees  in  prayer.  He  re- 
minds one  of  the  facetious  remark  made  about 
the  early  Puritans,  who  first  fell  upon  their 
knees,  then  upon  the  aborigines.  In  his  case  the 
aborigines  are  the  immigrants  from  foreign 
countries,  who,  as  he  claims,  are  the  cause  of  all 
the  Sabbath  desecration  and  other  ungodliness 
infesting  this  land  of  ours.  Presently  he  will 
state  it  as  his  firm  belief  that  unless  the  Jews 
become  converted  the  country  is  sure  to  go  to  the 
bow-wows.  His  anti-Semitic  harangues  would 
be  sure  to  invoke  a  riot,  were  it  not  for  the  fact 
that  the  greater  part  of  the  audience  do  not 
understand  English.  At  one  time  the  missionary 
tried  to  sidetrack  his  anti-Semitic  outbursts  by 
inviting  him  to  lead  in  prayer  instead  of  address- 
ing the  meeting.  But  the  scheme  failed  to  work. 
He  told  the  Lord  in  prayer  why  he  was  moved 
to  pray  for  the  conversion  of  the  Jews.     This 


Missionary  Wot^k  Among  Adults  79 

enfant  terrible  of  the  mission  must  be  tolerated, 
because  he  is  a  generous  contributor. 

What  makes  the  missionary's  face  flush  with 
anger?  A  very  unwelcome  visitor  is  just  enter- 
ing the  hall.  He  is  what  might  be  called  a  float- 
ing missionary.  Instead  of  establishing  a  mis- 
sion of  his  own,  he  finds  it  more  profitable  to  use 
other  missions  to  do  his  preaching  in,  although 
most  of  his  supporters  are  led  to  believe  that  he 
conducts  a  mission  of  his  own.  Nor  is  this  all. 
After  the  meeting  he  gets  acquainted  with  those 
who  are  considered  hopeful  subjects  of  conver- 
sion, and  tries  to  persuade  them  to  come  to  him 
for  baptism.  Small  wonder,  then,  that  this  peri- 
patetic and  parasitic  missionary  arouses  the 
anger  of  the  presiding  missionary,  who,  however, 
fearing  to  offend  him,  swallows  his  chagrin, 
beckons  him  to  the  platform,  and  gives  him  a 
hearty  handshake.  In  a  little  while  he  will  in- 
troduce him  as  "a  beloved  brother  in  Christ  and 
a  fellow-worker  in  the  vineyard  of  the  Lord." 

After  the  reading  from  the  Scriptures,  both  in 
English  and  Yiddish,  the  sermon  is  preached 
in  Yiddish.     The  average  missionary  has  only 


80         A  Missionaries  Return  to  Judaism 

one  sermon,  which  he  preaches  year  in  and  year 
out.  A  man  with  enough  education  to  enable 
him  to  compose  a  sermon  each  week  does  not 
remain  long  in  the  Jewish  mission  field.  He 
varies  this  sermon  by  selecting  each  time  a  dif- 
ferent text,  which,  with  a  little  maneuvring, 
leads  up  to  the  sermon. 

There  are,  though,  some  clever  missionaries,, 
who  have  the  knack  of  entertaining  their  hearers 
by  telling  some  funny  stories  or  by  commenting 
upon  some  current  events  in  an  interesting  way. 
They  can  indulge  in  that  kind  of  preaching  with 
the  more  freedom  as  their  Christian  friends  on 
the  platform  are  not  supposed  to  understand  the 
Yiddish.  Yet  a  missionary  who  places  too  much 
reliance  upon  the  Christian  ignorance  of  the 
Yiddish,  is  sometimes  left  in  the  lurch.  I  know 
of  a  case  in  which  a  missionary  got  himself  into 
a  peck  of  trouble  because  he  was  accused  of  fail- 
ing to  emphasize  in  his  sermon  the  doctrine  that 
nobody  can  be  saved  except  by  the  blood  of 
Christ.  He  had  been  informed  against  by  his 
assistant,  a  convert,  who  was  trying  to  get  his 
job. 


Missionanj  Work  Among  Adults  81 

Q.  How  does  the  audience  behave  during  the 
sermon? 

A.  The  audience  being  composed  of  such 
heterogeneous  elements  as  described  above,  it  is 
natural  to  expect  that  its  behavior  will  vary  ac- 
cording as  one  or  the  other  element  predominates. 
Above  all  things,  it  is  a  wide-awake  audience,  and 
in  this  it  differs  from  a  regular  church  or  syn- 
agog  audience,  which  is  inclined  to  be  som- 
nolent. The  Yiddish  speakers  are  occasionally 
interrupted  with  exclamations  of  protest  and 
dissent.  The  interruptions  proceed  from  dif- 
ferent motives.  Some  hearers  with  strong  Jewish 
feelings  get  angry  at  the  speaker,  and  are  unable 
to  sit  still  while  their  deeply  cherished  faith  is 
being  attacked,  while  others,  cold  and  indifferent 
to  religion,  will  listen  with  placid,  stolid  com- 
posure as  long  as  the  missionary  directs  his  at- 
tacks against  the  Jewish  tradition,  but  they  show 
signs  of  impatience  and  displeasure  the  moment 
he  argues  in  favor  of  the  Christian  religion. 
There  are  still  others  who  have  the  hoodlum 
spirit,  and  delight  in  raising  a  disturbance 
simply  for  disturbance  sake.    They  are  of  a  kind 


S2         A  j\Iissi(^ihiri/s  Return  to  Judaism 

that  would  just  as  lief  create  a  disturbance  in 
a  synagog  if  they  had  a  chance.  And,  finally, 
there  are  some  who  interrupt  from  the  same 
motive  as  actuates  those  whom  they  interrupt, 
namely,  pecuniary  gain.  Sometimes  an  impe- 
cunious and  impudent  fellow  will  come  to  the 
meetings  and,  with  the  assistance  of  a  few  of 
his  companions,  will  try  to  make  himself  so 
obnoxious  by  constant  interruptions  that  the 
missionary  finds  it  advantageous  to  buy  his  good 
behavior  with  a  few  dollars,  which  the  gang 
leader  divides  with  his  comrades. 

Disturbances  of  a  mild  type,  however,  are  not 
altogether  displeasing  to  the  missionary,  as  they 
are  taken  by  his  Christian  friends  on  the  plat- 
form as  an  unfailing  sign  that  the  sermon  is  of 
the  right  stuff,  stirring  up  the  hearers  and  caus- 
ing "the  leaven  of  the  Gospel  to  ferment."  In 
fact,  some  of  his  Christian  friends  would  be  dis- 
appointed if  the  meeting  were  to  go  on  without 
any  disturbance. 

Q.     What  follows  the  sermon? 

A.  After  the  sermon  the  meeting  is  turned 
into  a  testimonial  meeting,  that  is,  everybody  is 


Missionari/  Work  Among  Adults  83 

invited  to  testify  for  Christ  by  telling  what  is 
technically  known  as  his  "Christian  experience." 
This  opportunity  is  eagerly  seized  by  those  on 
the  platform,  who  take  turns  in  telling  of  the 
marvellous  things  the  Lord  has  done  for  them 
since  they  have  accepted  Christ,  and  exhorting 
all  present  to  accept  him  as  their  Savior.  Such 
testimonies  given  by  born  Christians  are  listened 
to  in  respectful  silence  by  the  audience,  though 
only  a  few  of  them  understand  English  enough 
to  comprehend  their  meaning.  But  the  moment 
a  "converted  Jewish  brother"  rises  to  speak  a 
wave  of  antagonism  sweeps  through  the  audience, 
and  his  speech  is  received  with  signs  of  hostility 
and  disgust,  while  the  platform  people  are  de- 
lighted over  this  living  illustration  of  the  power 
of  the  Gospel  to  break  the  "stony  heart"  of  a 
Jew. 

The  hope  and  encouragement  given  to  the 
Christian  friends  by  the  testimony  of  a  converted 
Jew  makes  such  testimony  of  great  value  to  the 
missionary,  and  the  more  so  if  it  comes  from  one 
of  his  own  converts.  In  that  case  his  reputation 
as  an  efficient  "winner  of  souls"  is  greatly  en- 


84         .i  Mis.si<)u<ny\s  Jxctnnt  to  Judawiit 

baiiced,  and  his  fame  spreads  thi'oui;lioiit  all  tbe 
churches  represented  on  the  platform.  In  the 
absence  of  a  convert  of  his  own  be  is  glad  to  get 
any  kind  of  convert,  and  it  pays  him  to  hold  out 
inducements  for  such  testimonies. 

One  case  of  this  kind  may  be  cited  here.  I 
can  vouch  for  tbe  substantial  truth  of  the  story, 
but  not  for  all  the  details.    It  happened  this  way : 

On  a  cold  evening  of  the  year  11)07,  three  "com- 
rades'' were  sitting  in  a  little  lunch-room  on 
Rivington  Street,  when  the  oft-i'ecurring  ques- 
tion came  up:  "What  shall  we  eat,  and  what 
shall  we  drink,  having  not  a  cent  in  our  pocket?" 
One  of  the  company  suggested  trying  tbe  mission 
game..  This  was  considered  a  fine  plan,  and 
Lemke — that  was  not  bis  exact  name — was  se- 
lected to  do  tbe  stunt.  For  a  whole  week  he  was 
coached  by  one  of  bis  companions  that  had  been 
loafing  around  Jewish  missions,  though  be  never 
was  converted,  and  had  become  familiar  with  all 
tbe  stock  phrases  pious  Christians  delight  to  bear 
from  tbe  lips  of  a  Jewish  convert.  Lemke  studied 
hard,  and  rehearsed  his  part  every  night  at  tbe 
lunch-room.  On  Saturday  afternoon  he  appeared 


Alisftioiiai'!/  WorJ:  Auioiu/  .[(htlts;  S.") 

i\t  tlio  incotiiig',  fit  and  ready,  aud  the  testimony 
he  gave  was  niarveUous.  He  qnotod  from  the 
r>il)le  so  fluently  and  convincingly,  he  rolled  his 
big  eyes  so  piously,  and  concluded  with  a  prayer 
so  touching,  that  he  drew  tears  from  the  Chris- 
tians present.  When  the  meeting  closed,  the  de- 
lighted missionary  slipped  a  ten  dollar  bill  into 
I.emke's  capacious  paw.  That  night  there  was  a 
jolly  company  in  the  liivington  Street  lunch- 
room. Lemke  had  to  show  them  over  and  over 
again  how  he  fooled  those  religious  "guys,"  and 
there  was  no  end  of  ridicule  poured  out  not  only 
against  the  faith  represented  by  the  mission,  but 
against  any  and  every  kind  of  religion. 

It  is  not  impossible,  though  highly  improbable, 
that  Lemke  acted  his  part  so  well  that  even  the 
missionarv   was  deceived. 


CHAPTER  VI 

MISSIONARY  WORK  AMONG  ADULTS 

{Continued) 

Q.  What  is  the  nature  and  character  of  an 
"inquirer's  meeting"? 

A.  One  evening  of  the  week  is  set  apart  for 
a  meeting  for  inquirers.  In  the  missionary  lingo 
an  "inquirer"  is  one  who,  though  not  a  Christian, 
is  yet  desirous  of  inquiring  into  the  truth  of 
Christianity.  Like  the  preaching  services  these 
meetings  are  free  to  all,  but  they  are  not  much 
advertised,  and  the  attendance  rarely  exceeds 
twenty.  Yet,  as  I  shall  presently  show,  they  are 
by  far  the  most  important  factor  in  the  mission 
work  and  the  most  dangerous  weapon  in  the  hand 
of  an  unscrupulous  missionary. 

The  meeting  is  opened  with  prayer,  which,  in 
the  absence  of  Christian  friends,  is  more  often 
than  not  short,  cold,  and  bloodless.     After  the 

86 


Missionari/  Work  Among  Adults  87 

reading  of  a  Scripture  lesson,  the  missionary 
stands  ready  to  answer  questions.  These  come 
thick  and  fast,  and  are  such  as  would  "puzzki 
Solomon's  wisdom  and  try  Job's  patience."  The 
experienced  missionary  knows  pretty  w^ell  what 
sort  of  questions  will  crop  up,  and  he  has  his 
stereotyped  answers  ready.  For  instance,  the 
ever-recurring  question  about  the  miraculous 
birth  of  Christ  he  answers  by  reading  Isaiah's 
prophecy,  "behold  a  virgin  shall  conceive  and 
bear  a  son."  (Isaiah  7:14.)  (At  the  present 
time  Christian  scholars  of  the  Hebrew  language 
agree  with  Jewish  scholars,  that  a  mistake  has 
been  made  in  the  translation  of  this  famous  text. 
The  Hebrew  word  "Ha-Almah,"  Avhich  was 
rendered  "the  virgin,"  should  have  been  trans- 
lated "the  maiden,"  or  "the  young  woman.") 

This  argument  from  projDhecy  is  re-enforced 
by  history.  The  speaker  goes  back  to  Adam,  and 
points  out  that  his  coming  into  the  world  was  no 
less  supernatural  and  marvellous  than  that  of 
Christ. 

As  for  the  Trinity,  the  missionary  professes  to 
believe  in  it  with  all  his  heart.     He  justifies  his 


SS         A  Missionan/s  Return  to  Juilais})) 

belief  hy  an  argument  like  this:  Does  not  the  He- 
brew word  for  Ood,  ]Ch)hini.  have  a  plural  end- 
ing? Is  it  not  written,  "And  God  said,  Let  us 
make  man  in  our  image?"  Did  not  the  angel 
of  the  Lord  appear  nnto  Abraham?  And  who 
could  this  angel  have  been,  if  not  Christ?  And  so, 
he  argues,  we  can  find  throughout  the  whole  of 
the  Old  Testament  plenty  of  proofs  for  a  Trinity, 
if  we  only  seek  for  them  in  a  praj^erful  spirit.  He 
does  not  explain  though  how  it  happens  that  the 
Jews,  who  of  all  men  ought  to  be  able  to  read 
their  own  Old  Testament  aright,  never  found  a 
Trinity  in  it,  nor  does  he  tell  his  inquirers  that 
the  most  learned  Christian  scholars  of  modern 
times  have  practically  abandoned  all  efforts  to 
prove  the  doctrine  of  the  Trinity  from  the  Bible. 
The  missionary,  however,  claims  to  be  fully  con- 
vinced that  it  is  there,  and  he  habitually  winds 
up  his  long  string  of  proof-texts  with  this  quota- 
tion from  the  Psalms,  "Open  Thou  mine  eyes 
and  I  shall  behold  wondrous  things  of  Thy  law." 
(Ps.  119:18.) 

These  meetings  do  not  always  run  smoothly. 
Sometimes  an  inquirer  will  show  his  dissatisfac- 


Missio)\(inj  AVorl-  Among  Adults  80 

tion  with  the  nnswers  given  in  a  rather  deinon- 
strative  manner,  and  will  not  hesitate  to  hnrl 
accusations  of  dislionestv  and  fraud  at  the 
missionary.  Such  an  obstreperous  "inquirer"  is 
often  forcibly  ejected  either  by  the  other  in- 
quirers, or  in  case  the  offender  is  likely  to  display 
physical  as  well  as  mental  resistance,  by  a  police- 
man, who  is  called  in  or  stationed  at  the  door 
for  such  an  emergency. 

But  the  best  argument  in  favor  of  the  mission- 
ary's cause,  and  the  one  which  he  relies  upon 
most,  is  kept  in  the  background  until  after  the 
close  of  the  meeting.  Then  the  impecunious 
"inquirers"  step  up  to  the  missionary,  one  at  a 
time,  to  tell  their  hard  luck  stories.  A  little  help 
is  given  to  every  one  that  asks.  The  amount 
varies  greatly,  sometimes  it  is  as  low  as  ten 
cents.  But  a  dime  means  a  great  deal  to  a  home- 
less man  in  a  big  city.  The  "inquirer"  leaves  the 
meeting  somewhat  relieved  and  not  a  little  hope- 
ful that  he  will  get  more  on  his  next  attendance. 
For  it  is  commonly  understood  that  the  oftener 
a  man  comes  to  the  meeting,  the  larger  the  mis- 
sionary's bounty  grows.    And  if,  after  repeated 


1)0        A  Missionanjs  Return  to  Judaism 

attendance,  he  shows  signs  of  being  interested 
in  Christianity,  he  is  sure  of  being  taken  in  hand 
by  the  missionary  and  becoming  a  subject  of  his 
solicitudinous  care.  Those  signs  may  be  mani- 
fested in  various  ways,  as,  for  instance,  by  asking 
a  question  in  a  reverential  spirit,  or  by  helping 
to  distribute  the  hymn  books,  or  by  bowing  his 
head  during  the  prayer.  The  last  is  a  sign  of  a 
highly  advanced  state,  and  is  looked  upon  as 
being  the  next  step  to  conversion.  When  the 
''inquirer"  is  ready  to  be  converted,  the  mission- 
ary takes  him  in  hand,  provides  him  with  a 
home,  and  tries  to  get  him  some  employment  in 
a  Christian  shop  or  store.  Before  long  such  an 
"inquirer"  blossoms  out  into  a  full-fledged  be- 
liever, and  the  mission  has  another  lost  soul  to 
its  credit. 

Most  of  the  "inquirers,"  how^ever,  remain  in 
a  chronic  stage  of  "inquiry"  until  they  find  work, 
or  until  the  missionary,  getting  tired  of  their 
indecision,  gives  them  up  as  hopeless  cases,  and 
refuses  further  help. 

A  curious  case  of  such  an  abandoned  "inquirer" 
came  to  my  knowledge  in  New  York  City.    This 


Missionary  Work  Among  Adults  91 

"inquirer,"  although  no  longer  in  favor  with  the 
missionary,  managed  to  turn  an  "honest"  penny 
by  piloting  some  of  his  friends  and  acquaintances 
to  the  meetings,  who  would  give  him  a  "commis- 
sion" from  the  money  obtained  from  the  mission- 
ary. 

Q.  What  is  the  general  effect  produced  by 
these  meetings  upon  the  minds  of  those  who  at- 
tend? 

A.  As  may  be  expected,  these  meetings  do  no 
good,  and  can  only  harm  those  who  attend  them. 
If  the  "inquirer"  happens  to  be  in  a  confused 
religious  state  of  mind,  the  discussions  at  these 
meetings  make  his  confusion  worse  confounded; 
if  his  faith  in  Judaism  is  weak,  they  w^eaken  it 
still  more.  In  recommending  Christianity  the 
missionaries  must  needs  deprecate  Judaism,  and 
some  of  them  do  it  with  a  vengeance,  especially 
those  who  have  Gentile  wives.  The  "inquirer," 
therefore,  losing  whatever  grip  he  had  on  Juda- 
ism, and  failing  to  get  hold  of  Christianity,  sinks 
into  religious  nihilism. 

That  the  missionary's  bounty  tends  to  debase 
the  character  of  its  recipients  is  self-evident. 


92         A  Missionarij's  Ixcfiifii  lo  Judaism 

Q.  What  is  the  nature  and  object  of  a  Freo 
Reading  Room? 

A.  Missions  working  in  large  cities  often 
rent  a  store  in  a  Jewish  neighborhood  and  fit  it 
np  as  a  Free  Reading  Room.  The  sign  over  the 
door  or  in  the  window  invites  the  passer-by  to 
come  in,  but  it  fails  to  indicate  the  Christian 
character  of  the  place,  so  that  many  a  young 
man  enters  who  would  not  care  or  dare  to  enter 
a  missionary  place.  The  books  on  the  shelves 
are  mostly  of  a  religious  character,  a  few  of  a 
general  character  being  added  for  appearance 
sake.  The  tables  are  strewn  with  Bibles  and 
tracts  in  Yiddish.  There  is  not  much  reading 
done  in  these  reading  rooms,  for,  as  soon  as  a 
stranger  takes  a  seat,  he  is  approached  by  the 
missionary  or  his  helper,  and  the  conversation  is 
adroitly  turned  into  the  religious  channel.  Pretty 
soon  a  discussion  is  started,  in  which  the  other 
visitors  take  part,  while  the  missionary  sits  by, 
and  complacently  listens  to  their  wrangle. 

Sometimes  young  men  filled  with  socialistic 
or  anarchistic  ardor  try  to  "capture"  the  read- 
ing room   and  use  it  to  propagate   their  own 


Mlssionuri/  Work  Amony  Adults  93 

theories  among  those  who  happen  to  come  in, 
while  Christian  capitalists  pay  the  rent  and  the 
gas  bills.  At  times  they  bring  along  their 
own  books  and  periodicals,  and  insist  that  they 
are  at  liberty  to  read  what  they  please  in  a  /ree 
reading  room.  The  missionary  is  disposed  to 
treat  these  intruders  leniently  and  to  wink  at 
their  piratical  tactics,  because  they  bring  life 
into  the  place,  and  also  because  they  figure  in 
his  report,  when  he  tells  his  patrons  that  the 
large  attendance  at  the  Reading  Room  shows  "a 
growing  desire  on  the  part  of  young  Jews  to 
know  more  of  Christ." 

Occasionally  there  is  a  social  evening  at  the 
Reading  Room,  when  Christian  ladies  come  and 
serve  light  refreshments.  They  do  this  with  so 
much  grace  that  the  Jews  who  attend  are  forced 
to  ask :  Why  don't  the  high-toned  Jewish  ladies 
ever  try  to  mingle  with  the  poorer  classes  and 
serve  them  with  a  plate  of  ice  cream?  A  ques- 
tion which  I  must  leave  for  the  Jewish  ladies 
themselves  to  answer. 

These  social  evenings  are  made  use  of  by  the 
missionary  to  attract  people,  and  also  to  show 


04         A  Misfiionary's  Return  to  Judaism 

his  patrons  the  effectiveness  of  his  work  among 
the  Jews.  A  very  successful  missionary  was  in 
the  habit  of  using  a  cunning  trick  in  connection 
with  such  socials.  He  would  first  tell  the  visit- 
ing Christians  that  most  of  the  Jews  present  are 
won  for  Christ,  and  are  almost  ready  to  be  bap- 
tized, which  statement  he  is  about  to  verify  by 
calling  upon  all  who  love  Jesus  to  rise.  Then 
he  would  address  the  audience  in  Yiddish,  and 
request  all  those  who  feel  grateful  for  the  re- 
freshments offered  by  the  ladies  to  show  their 
gratitude  by  rising. 

Q.     What  is  a  Shop-Window  Mission? 

A.  This  is  a  new  idea  in  the  Jewish  mission 
field,  and  its  originator  was  undoubtedly  driven 
to  it  by  a  desire  to  get  ahead  of  his  rivals.  Com- 
petition, the  soul  of  trade,  plays  a  part  also  in 
the  trade  in  souls.  This  new  invention  is  not 
half  so  interesting  as  the  way  in  which  it  is  an- 
nounced. Let  me  reproduce  the  whole  leaflet  in 
which  the  novel  method  is  described: 

JEWISH  BIBLE   SHOP-WINDOW  MISSIONS. 
The  plan  of  this  work  is  commercial,  and  truly  it  is  a 
commercial    people   to   whom    it    appeals.     No    one   better 


Missionary  Work  Among  Adults  95 

than  the  Jew  understands  how  to  push  forward  a  business 
enterprise,  and  none  can  better  appreciate  the  use  of 
business  methods  to  secure  his  attention.  Many  in  fact 
cannot  be  reached  any  other  way  than  through  the  channels 
of  trade,  and  the  purpose  of  this  mission  is  to  excite 
Jewish  interest  by  means  of  business  devices.  A  shop  is 
secured  in  the  principal  Jewish  thoroughfare  of  a  city, 
and  the  window  is  made  attractive  with  open  Bibles  and 
tracts  and  Texts  in  all  the  languages  used  by  the  people 
of  the  dispersion.  Invitations  of  welcome  draw  the  in- 
quirer into  the  shop  where  the  attendant  meets  him  and 
explains  the  nature  of  the  Wares.  He  is  given  tracts  in 
his  own  tongue,  and,  if  earnest,  is  presented  with  a  copy 
of  the  New  Testament.  A  good  reading  room  is  at  his 
disposal  if  tired,  or  desirous  of  quiet  for  reading  or 
vrriting. 

We  show  him  our  manner  of  correspondence  with  tho 
Firm  for  whom  we  are  agents,  at  noon  and  evening  wor- 
ship. We  endeavor  by  all  right  means  to  draw  the  Jew 
into  business  relations  with  the  same  Firm  with  whom 
we  deal.  We  are  satisfied  Their  Word  is  true,  and  we  wish 
to  induce  Jews  to  put  it  to  the  test  as  we  have  for  our- 
selves. Our  principle  is,  "Freely  ye  have  received,  freely 
give." 

We  are  asking  the  Head  of  our  house  to  send  willing 
agents,  and  open  Jewish  Bible  Shop-windows  in  all  the 
leading  commercial  centres  of  the  United  States.  The 
Firm  says:  "Whom  shall  I  send,  and  who  will  go  for  us?" 
Who  is  willing  to  accept  the  agency  in  Boston,  New  York, 
Cincinnati,  or  St.  Louis;  or  in  any  city  where  Israelites 
abound? 


9G         A  Missionanfs  Return  to  Judaism 

Full  Scripture  Texts  on  cardboard,  hanging'  over  the 
sidewalk  as  swinging  signs,  or  tacked  outside  of  doors  or 
buildings,  as  well  as  inside ;  a  table  with  free  Bible 
literature  in  the  street  or  any  device  used  by  street  mer- 
chants to  attract  attention,  may  be  used  in  this  work. 

Similar  Shop-Windows  have  been  opened  in  Baltimor?, 
Wilmington  and  Harrisburg,  with  daily  united  prayer  for 
a  wide  extension. 

"For  I  am  not  ashamed  of  the  Gospel  of  Christ ;  for  it 
is  the  power  of  God  unto  salvation  to  every  one  that  be- 
lieveth;  to  the  Jew  first,  and  also  to  the  Greek." 

ITiere  is  daily  Bible  study,  but  no  preaching.  With  con- 
fidence in  the  Word  we  avoid  all  private  interpretation  or 
teaching  other  than  the  literal  Text. 

Q.  What  is  the  purpose  of  the  "house  to  house 
visitations"? 

A.  In  his  report  the  missionary  claims  that 
he  is  accomplishing  much  good  by  visiting  Jew- 
ish families.  He  distributes  Yiddish  literature, 
and  takes  the  opportunity  of  talking  to  the  peo 
pie  about  the  salvation  of  their  souls.  These 
visits  are,  however,  for  the  most  part  fictitious. 
There  is  hardly  a  respectable  Jewish  family 
which  a  Jewish  missionary  could  visit  after  his 
identity  is  made  known.  In  all  ^y  experience 
I  have  known  of  only  one  such  case,  and  thii 


Missionary  Work  Among  Adults  97 

reason  was  because  the  missionary  proved  to  be 
a  cheerful  loser  at  a  friendly  game  of  poker  he 
took  a  hand  in.  There  are,  however,  several 
missions  in  large  cities  through  which  "house  to 
house  visitations"  are  actually  made,  not  by  the 
missionary  himself,  but  by  born  Christians,  who 
are  more  readily  admitted  into  Jewish  homes. 
Although  unable  to  talk  Yiddish,  they  often  suc- 
ceed in  making  friends  by  means  of  various  acts 
of  helpfulness  in  household  matters,  and  though 
they  rarely  make  much  of  an  impression  upon 
the  parents,  they  often  gain  their  consent  to  have 
the  children  attend  the  mission  school. 

As  for  the  religious  literature  distributed  by 
these  visitors,  the  recipients  often  put  them  to 
uses  never  dreamed  of  by  the  pious  donors. 

Q.  What  becomes  of  the  convert  after  his 
baptism? 

A.  The  arrangement  usually  made  is  as  fol- 
lows: For  a  number  of  weeks  after  his  baptism 
the  convert  stays  at  the  mission,  enjoying  as  it 
were  the  honeymoon  of  his  conversion.  I)urini»- 
this  time  he  accompanies  the  missionary  to 
various  meetings,  at  which  he  is  presented  to  tlie 


98         A  Missionary's  Return  to  Judaism 

audiences  as  a  living  illustration  of  the  power 
of  the  Gospel  to  touch  the  heart  of  a  Jew,  as  a 
"brand  plucked  from  the  fire,"  and  as  a  fore- 
runner of  the  glorious  time  coming  when  "all 
Israel  shall  be  saved."  He  is  taught  to  make  a 
little  speech,  which  he  delivers  in  more  or  less 
broken  English,  punctuated  with  the  oddest 
gestures.  He  is  listened  to  with  the  keenest  at- 
tention, and  one  can  well  imagine  his  feelings 
of  pride  in  finding  himself  the  cynosure  of  so 
many  well-dressed  and  cultured  people,  who  hang 
upon  his  lips  and  drink  in  every  word  he  utters. 
His  "experience"  has  three  stereotyped  points, 
namely : 

1.  His  unhappy  condition  while  he  was  un- 
converted. He  felt  that  he  was  a  sinner,  but  he 
could  find  nobody  to  free  him  from  his  sin. 

2.  His  present  happiness,  which  is  beyond  all 
earthly  dreams.  He  has  cast  all  sins  away,  and 
there  is  nothing  to  compare  with  the  happiness 
he  is  enjoying  every  minute  of  his  glorious 
Christian  life. 

3.  He  is  happy  in  spite  of  the  great  sacrifices 
he  had  to  make  in  becoming  a  Christian.    He  is 


Missionary  Work  Among  Adults  99 

already  being  ostracized  by  his  friends,  and  is 
sure  to  be  disinherited  and  disowned  by  his 
parents  as  soon  as  they  hear  of  his  conversion. 
I  once  heard  this  statement  about  being  disin- 
herited from  the  lips  of  one  who  afterwards  ad- 
mitted that  that  danger  was  entirely  imaginary, 
as  his  parents  never  possessed  any  worldly  goods 
worth  bequeathing,  and  he  had  been  orphaned 
when  a  boy  of  ten. 

After  tlie  new  convert  has  finished  making  the 
rounds  of  the  various  churches  from  which  the 
missionary  funds  flow,  his  presence  at  the  mis- 
sion house  grows  less  and  less  desirable.  Der 
Mohr  hat  seine  Schuldigkeit  gethan,  der  Mohr 
kann  gehen.  Sometimes  the  missionary  finds 
some  Christian  friend  who  is  an  employer  of 
labor,  and  is  willing  to  give  the  new  convert  a 
chance  to  earn  his  living.  If  the  convert  has 
still  some  manhood  left  in  him,  he  takes  the 
offered  opportunity  and  sticks  to  his  "Christian'' 
job,  until  he  secures  some  other  employment 
without  the  help  of  his  conversion.  The  moment 
he  succeeds  in  this,  he  cuts  loose  from  the  mis- 
sionary, and  tries  to  forget  all  about  his  con- 


100       A  Missio)iary\s  Return  to  Judaism 

version,  which  he  looks  back  upon  as  a  youthful 
prank,  committed  under  the  stress  of  dire  pov- 
erty. In  some  cases,  however,  the  convert,  after 
a  few  months  of  laziness  at  the  mission  house, 
has  lost  all  taste  for  work.  What  is  the  use  of 
being  converted,  he  reasons,  if  I  have  to  work 
just  as  hard  as  I  did  before  my  conversion?  But 
his  Christian  friends  think  differently.  They 
expect  a  convert  to  work  harder  than  ever  before, 
so  as  to  prove  his  sincerity,  and  they  show  little 
inclination  to  provide  him  with  an  easy  job. 
But  the  convert  remembers  with  bitterness  how 
the  missionary,  when  persuading  him  to  become 
a  Christian,  dropped  so  many  significant  hints 
of  the  life  of  ease  and  plenty  enjoyed  by  a  Chris- 
tian, and  he  becomes  disgruntled  and  resentful. 
Fearing  a  scandal,  the  poor  missionary  does  his 
best  to  pacify  the  unruly  convert,  and  supports 
him  for  a  while  out  of  the  funds  which  he  collects 
under  the  designation  of  "contributions  for  con- 
verts who  suffer  because  the  Jews  persecute 
them."  But  soon  the  convert  gets  tired  of  the 
meagre  fare,  interlarded  with  pious  talk,  and 
quits  in  disgust.     He  takes  up  the  thread  of  life 


Missioiianj  Work  Among  Adults        101 

where  he  dropped  it  before  the  conversion  epi- 
sode, and  sometimes  his  Christian  experience 
results  in  making  him  a  more  faithful  Jew.  Any- 
wav,  he  is  lost  to  Christianity. 

There  are  isolated  cases  in  which  the  convert 
decides  to  enter  the  missionary  career  and  to  do 
unto  others  as  he  was  done  by.  How  little  the 
Christian  Churcli  is  benefited  by  such  work- 
ers, will  be  shown  further  on,  when  I  shall  tell 
of  the  Jewish  missionaries  I  have  met. 


CHAPTER  VII 

MISSIONARY  WORK  AMONG  CHILDREN 

The  man  who  steals  candy  from  a  child  is  a 
gentleman  compared  with  one  who  takes  from  a 
child  the  implicit  faith  in  the  goodness  of  its 
parents'  race  and  religion.  This  mean  business 
of  getting  Jewish  children  away  from  the  Jewish 
faith  was  always  repugnant  to  me,  and  I  never 
had  a  mission  school  for  children.  Nor  could  I 
ever  quite  understand  how  some  very  good  and 
kind-hearted  Christians  could  lend  their  support 
to  this  work  of  "child-stealing."  This  term  was 
applied  by  a  high  dignitary  of  the  Roman  Catho- 
lic Church  to  the  efforts  of  certain  Protestant 
Settlement  houses  in  New  York  City. 

One  can  imagine  what  these  enthusiastic  Chris- 
tians would  think  of  and  do  to  a  Mahometan,  or 
a  Mormon,  or  even  a  Christian  belonging  to  an- 
other denomination,  who  should  attempt  to  con- 

102 


Missionary  Work  Among  Children      103 

vert  their  own  children.  But  they  consider  it 
quite  right  and  proper  to  invade  a  Jewish  neigh- 
borhood for  the  purpose  of  getting  Jewish  chil- 
dren away  from  the  faith  of  their  parents.  It 
all  depends  upon  whose  ox  has  been  gored. 

This  unethical  religious  activity  is  commonly 
excused  on  the  ground  that  a  Christian  must 
obey  his  Master's  command,  expressed  in  the 
words :  "Suffer  little  children  to  come  unto  me."' 
The  weakness  of  this  excuse,  even  when  looked  at 
from  a  Christian  point  of  view,  will  best  be  shown 
by  reading  the  whole  passage  wherein  that  sen- 
tence occurs.    Let  me  quote  it : 

"And  they  were  bringing  unto  him  little  chil- 
dren, that  he  should  touch  them;  and  the  dis- 
ciples rebuked  them.  But  when  Jesus  saw  it,  he 
was  moved  with  indignation,  and  said  unto  them, 
Suffer  the  little  children  to  come  unto  me;  for- 
bid them  not:  for  of  such  is  the  Kingdom  of 
God."  (Mark  10:13-14.) 

Now,  who  were  "they"  that  brought  the  little 
children?  Why,  of  course,  the  parents,  who  are 
the  God-appointed  guardians  of  their  children. 
Who  would  have  dared  bring  to  Jesus  children 


104       A  Missionari/'s  Return  to  Judaism 

without  the  knowledge  and  consent  of  their 
parents,  or  even  against  the  will  of  their  parents? 
That  this  is  done  by  missionary  hirelings,  the 
following  testimony  will  amply  prove. 

Q.     How  is  a  mission  school  conducted? 

A.  Several  times  a  week  Jewish  boys  and 
girls  assemble  at  the  mission  rooms,  where  they 
are  formed  into  classes  for  the  study  of  certairi 
subjects  not  generally  taught  in  the  public 
schools,  as  needlework,  singing,  etc.  The  teach- 
ers are  Christian  volunteers,  who  perform  their 
tasks  with  only  one  object  in  view,  to  impress 
the  truth  of  Christianity  upon  the  young  minds 
of  their  pupils.  But  this  main  object  is  at  first 
carefully  left  in  the  background.  The  newcomer 
would  be  frightened  away,  if  the  mention  of 
Christ  was  too  noticeable.  Accordingly,  at  the 
first  few  sessions,  the  opening  prayer  is  of  a 
general  character,  from  which  even  the  name  of 
Jesus  is  cautiously  omitted,  and  only  the  phrase 
"our  Lord"  used.  The  same  precaution  is  used 
in  the  selection  of  the  hymns.  After  the  classes 
are  well  organized,  the  teacher  gradually  grows 
bolder,  and  eventually  she  lets  the  cat  out  of  the 


Missionary  Work  Among  Children       105 

bag,  and  plainly  tells  the  pupils  to  "give  their 
hearts  to  Jesus.''  When  this  stage  is  reached, 
there  is  generally  a  falling  off  in  the  attendance, 
but  the  zealous  teacher  consoles  herself  with  the 
hope  that  '*the  remnant  of  Israel"  will  be  saved. 

Those  children  Avho  continue  to  come  to  the 
mission  school,  even  after  the  proselytizing  ef- 
forts are  no  longer  masked,  carefully  keep  from 
their  parents  the  knowledge  of  the  nature  of  the 
school  they  are  attending,  which  can  be  done  the 
more  easily  as  the  mother  is  too  much  burdened 
with  her  household  duties  and  difficulties,  and 
the  father,  on  coming  home  from  work,  is  too 
fatigued  and  exhausted,  to  inquire  into  the  char- 
acter of  the  place  where  one  or  two  of  their  half- 
dozen  children  are  spending  the  after-school 
hours. 

It  sometimes  happens,  however,  that  the 
parents  allow  their  children  to  go  to  the  mission 
schools  either  because  they  want  to  please 
their  children,  and  are  quite  sure  that  the  mis- 
sionary "stuff  and  nonsense"  will  have  no  effect 
upon  their  children's  minds,  or  because  they 
want  to  please  the  missionary,  to  whom  they  feel 


106       A  Missionary's  Return  to  Judaism 

indebted  for  financial  assistance.  When  the 
missionary  appeals  for  funds  to  help  "a  poor 
Jewish  family  in  distress,"  it  will  be  invariably 
found  that  this  poor  Jewish  family  has  some 
children  that  attend  the  mission  school. 

Q.  Is  it  true  that  the  missionaries  encourage 
children  to  come  even  when  their  parents  object/ 

A.  It  is.  The  missionaries,  though,  deny  it, 
and  are  very  careful  to  destroy  any  evidence 
tending  to  show  that  they  do  not  shrink  from 
fostering  disobedience  to  their  parents  in  the 
children's  mind.  But  "out  of  their  own  mouths 
they  shall  be  condemned." 

The  following  extract  is  taken  from  a  mission- 
ary magazine  called  "The  Chosen  People,"  pub- 
lished by  a  Jewish  missionary,  who,  by  the  way, 
is  reputed  to  be  worth  more  than  |100,000,  all 
of  which  he  made  as  a  Christian  "worker." 

In  the  February  issue  of  1907,  a  copy  of  which 
may  be  found  in  the  New  York  Public  Library, 
the  following  item  appeared  as  a  part  of  the  re- 
port by  one  of  the  teachers  of  the  mission  school : 

Last  Sunday  I  noticed  one  of  our  smaller  girls,  who 
lives    opposite    the    Mission,    standing    in    the    aisle    and 


Missionary  Work  Among  Children      107 

shaking  her  hands  to  some  one  in  her  familj'.  Looking  up, 
I  saw  her  father  sitting  at  the  window,  shaking  his  fist  at 
her  and  looking  very  angry.  There  are  four  children  in 
that  family  who  come  to  the  Mission,  and  every  time  they 
come  they  are  severely  punished  when  they  get  home,  but 
still  they  come,  and  I  have  heard  them  say  they  cannot 
wait  till  Sunday  comes. 

Q.  What  special  inducements  are  offered  by 
the  mission  schools? 

A.  There  is  always  something  to  attract  and 
keep  the  children.  In  the  autumn  there  is  the 
preparation  for  the  Christmas  celebration,  with 
its  accompanying  presents  and  entertainments. 
This  is  followed  by  the  preparation  for  the  Easter 
festival,  at  which  time  each  pupil  gets  a  pot  of 
lilies,  and  then  comes  the  crowning  reward  for 
faithful  attendance,  which  consists  in  the  annual 
picnic  arranged  for  the  pupils  of  the  Mission. 
Not  that  it  is  wrong  to  attract  children  by 
arranging  entertainments,  picnics,  etc.  Such 
attractions  are  usual  in  all  Sunday  schools,  and 
are  in  themselves  quite  right  and  proper.  But 
it  is  the  wrong  and  improper  use  made  of  them 
by  the  Mission  that  is  to  be  condemned.  The 
Jewish  children  who  take  part  in  these  enter- 


108       .1  Missionary's  Return  to  Judaism 

tainments  and  picnics  are  brought  together  under 
false  pretences.  Their  parents  are  ignorant  of 
the  real  aim  and  purpose  of  the  managers  of 
these  entertainments,  who  claim  to  be  inspired 
by  purely  philanthropic  motives.  The  whole 
thing  reeks  with  insincerity  and  falsehood,  and 
all  the  perfumed  words  of  love  and  kindness 
cannot  wash  away  the  stains  and  bkjts  made 
upon  the  pure  and  innocent  souls  of  those  wlio 
are  the  recipients  of  these  "Christian''  benefac- 
tions. 

Q.  How  does  the  missionary  report  his  work 
among  the  Jewish  children? 

A.  In  looking  over  any  report  of  a  Jewish 
mission  one  finds  a  special  column  devot(Ml  to 
the  w^ork  among  children.  The  names  of  the 
Christian  ladies  who  assist  in  the  work  are 
therein  specially  mentioned  with  words  of  praise 
and  blessing.  An  enterprising  missionary  will 
sometimes  reproduce  a  picture  taken  at  Christ- 
mas time  or  at  the  annual  picnic,  showing  a 
crowd  of  Jewish  boys  and  girls  in  attendance. 
This  branch  of  his  activity  is  the  pride  and  glory 
of  the  missionary,  and  his  last  resort  in  appeal- 


Missionary  Work  Among  Children      109 

ing  for  monev.  If  there  is  a  dearth  of  converts, 
and  his  Christian  friends  show  signs  of  getting 
weary  in  well-doing,  he  is  sure  to  arouse  their 
flagging  interest  by  pointing  to  the  great  work 
among  the  children,  who  are  represented  to  be 
more  susceptible  to  the  Gospel  truth  than  their 
"stiff-necked"  parents. 

Here  follow  a  few  samples : 

Among-  the  children  our  work  has  been  most  successful. 
We  started  our  sewing-  school  with  two  little  g-irls.  We 
have  now  in  membership  more  than  one  hundred.  The 
Eabbis  of  Newark  endeavored  to  prevent  the  children  at- 
tending the  meetings,  and  the  Ladies'  Auxiliary  Society 
being  formed  to  fight  the  infliience  of  the  Mission,  they 
even  went  to  such  extremes  as  to  stand  on  the  corners  of 
the  street  to  keep  the  children  away.  But  by  the  grace 
of  God  we  are  overcoming  this  persecution,  and  several 
of  the  little  ones  have  been  led  into  the  true  fold. 

At  a  children's  meeting  held  recently.  Dr.  Clark  of  thi' 
Baptist  Publication  Society  addressed  the  little  ones,  and 
in  response  to  his  inquiry  as  to  how  many  believed  in  Jesus, 
about  twenty-six  raised  their  hands.  ITiis,  after  he  had 
carefully  explained  to  them  the  meaning  of  his  question, 
and  he  had  desired  those  only  who  were  sure  they  believed 
in  the  Suvior  to  signify  it  in  that  manner. 

So  much  for  the  girls. 


110       A  Missionary's  Return  to  Judaism 

Are  the  boys  backward  in  coming  forward? 
Not  if  we  may  believe  the  following  report  pub- 
lished by  a  New  York  missionary,  who,  it  seems, 
has  made  boys'  work  his  specialty.  Under  the 
caption  "Testimonies  from  Jewish  Boys  as  to 
what  they  have  learned  in  the  Christian  Church,'' 
he  prints  a  long  string  of  testimonies,  in  all  of 
which  one  misses  the  true  ring  of  sincerity.  I 
quote  the  following: 

A  Jewish  boy  told  us  recently  that  he  has  become  a 
better  boy  since  he  has  given  his  heart  to  the  Lord  Jesus. 
Said  he  :  "The  other  Jewish  boys  who  attend  the  naeetings 
will  be  better,  too,  by  and  by,  for  it  will  happen  to  them 
what  hapf)ened  to  me.  You  remember  I  was  a  bad  boy, 
but  now  Jesus  helps  me." 

Here  is  another: 

During  these  days  since   I  came  to  this  church  I  took 

very  much  interest  in  hearing  Mr.  say  that  Jesus 

Christ  is  our  Messiah. 

Jesus  our  Savior  suffered  the  consequences,  by  taking 
our  sins  away  from  us,  he  perished  at  the  cross  for  our 
sake.  Every  Friday  night  when  I  come  into  our  small 
room  in  the  Church  I  tried  to  learn  all  the  songs  of  the 
"Gospel  Book"  and  I  succeeded  with  some  of  them.  I  love 
Jesus.     I  have  no  more  to  write. 


Missionary  Work  Among  Children      111 

Here  is  a  testimony  with  plenty  of  Bible 
quotations : 

After  coining  to  this  Church  for  many  years  I  have  at 
last  learned  who  my  Savior  is  and  also  the  meaning  of 
Jesus  Christ,  which  means  Jesus  the  Savior.  What  he 
has  done  for  us  we  find  in  John  3:16.  I  have  also  learned 
another  reason,  it  says  in  Luke  19:10  he  came  to  seek 
and  to  save  the  lost,  and  we  are  all  lost  sinners.  I  have 
also  learned  in  Isaiah  53  chapter  he  was  despised  and 
rejected  of  men  and  he  should  come  in  the  time  of  the 
second  temple.  Jesus  is  a  Jew  and  king  of  all  Jews  and 
king  of  all  men. 

Q.  What  are  the  actual  facts  about  these 
mission  schools? 

A.  Careful  observation,  extending  over  a 
period  of  many  years,  has  shown  me  that  only 
one  out  of  a  thousand  children  that  attend  the 
mission  schools  are  influenced  to  such  a  degree 
that  they  become  Christians.  In  New  York  City, 
for  instance,  where  there  are  perhaps  five  thou- 
sand Jewish  children  who  in  some  way  or  other 
come  under  the  influence  of  various  mission 
schools,  there  will  probably  be  found  five  children 
every  year  who  are  won  over  to  Christianity. 


112       A  Missionarifs  Return  to  Judaisfii 

The  other  4,995  remain  Jews,  even  those  who 
were  induced  to  give  the  testimonials  in  the  re- 
ports of  the  missionaries  quoted  above.  But  It 
is  only  natural  to  suppose  that  had  they  not 
come  under  missionary  influences  they  would  be 
better  Jews. 

The  fact  that  the  children  in  most  cases  come 
without  the  knowledge  of  their  parents,  and 
thereby  are  encouraged  to  do  things  by  stealth 
and  deception,  is  bad  enough,  but  this  is  as 
nothing  compared  with  the  injury  inflicted  upon 
the  child  by  lowering  the  religion  of  his  parents 
in  his  estimation. 

Many  foreign-born  parents  find  it  hard 
enough  to  command  the  respect  of  their  x\meri- 
can-born  children,  because  of  their  ungrammati- 
cal  English  and  their  faulty  pronunciation.  And 
now  these  unscrupulous  missionaries  aggravate 
the  evil  by  filling  the  heads  of  the  children  with 
the  notion  that  their  parents'  religion,  too,  is 
outlandish  and  faulty.  They  do  not  always  ex- 
press it  in  so  many  words,  but  that  is  what  their 
teaching  practically  amounts  to.  TIius  tlie  chil- 
dren are  alienated  from  their  i)ui-ents,  and  the 


Misslonanj  Work  Among  Children       113 

seeds  of  discord  and  discontent  are  planted  in 
the  minds  of  tender  children. 

And  now  a  word  to  the  friends  and  supporters 
of  the  mission  schools,  who  seem  to  derive  a  great 
deal  of  satisfaction  from  the  goody-goody  testi- 
monies of  boys  and  girls,  examples  of  which  I 
reproduced  above.  Even  if  these  testimonies  are 
genuine  expressions  of  the  feelings  of  those  to 
whom  they  are  attributed,  even  if  the  teaching 
in  those  schools  does  result  in  some  accessions  to 
Christianity,  is  it  right  to  do  harm  to  a  thousand 
children  for  the  sake  of  saving  the  soul  of  one 
child?  Is  it  moral  to  destroy  the  peace  and 
happiness  of  a  thousand  households  in  order  to 
rescue  one  soul  from  the  destruction  of  hell? 
If  this  question  were  put  to  a  Torquemada,  he 
would  answer  "Yes."  But  you  Christians  of  the 
twentieth  century  must  blush  at  this  crude  and 
cruel  notion  of  the  Middle  Ages,  and  your  answer 
must  be  a  thundering  "No." 


CHAPTER  VIII 


THE  LITTLE  SAINT 


When  I  first  met  him,  at  a  convention  of  Jew- 
ish missionaries,  he  was  at  the  zenith  of  his  fame 
as  a  missionary  worker  among  the  Jews.  His 
friends  affectionately  called  him  "the  little  Sr. 
Paul,"  and  confidently  asserted  that  this  modern 
St.  Paul  was  destined  to  bring  all  the  Jews  ot 
America  into  the  Christian  Church.  He  made 
Christians  believe  that  he  could  make  a  million 
converts,  while  he  himself  believed  that  he  could 
make  a  million  dollars.  When  his  missionary 
bubble  collapsed,  he  was  short  of  a  million  by 
999,980  converts.  How  near  he  came  to  getting 
his  million  dollars  will  forever  remain  a  matter 
of  conjecture. 

He  was  said  to  come  of  a  family  of  "wonder 
rabbis" — Jewish  saints,  who  still  flourish  in  the 
dark  places  of  Eastern  Europe.     They  a^e  held 

114 


The  Little  Saint  115 

in  great  veneration  by  the  superstitious,  and  aro 
supposed  to  be  able  to  perform  miracles  and  do 
other  saintly  stunts,  by  which  they  manage  to 
live  in  luxurious  comfort  and  ease. 

But  while  his  saintly  forbears  had  only  the 
limited  Jewish  population  of  a  Russian  province 
to  work  among,  his  genius  for  hoodwinking  peo- 
ple displayed  its  activity  on  a  vastly  larger  scale. 
His  field  was  the  world.  Not  only  in  this  country, 
but  in  all  parts  of  the  world.  Christian  people 
were  praying  for  the  success  of  his  work  and 
sending  in  their  financial  help. 

What  was  the  secret  of  this  "little  saint's" 
great  power  over  the  hearts  and  pocketbooks  of 
so  many  Christians?  His  pious  friends  were 
convinced  that  it  was  due  to  the  prayers  which 
were  offered  in  all  parts  of  the  world  for  the 
success  of  his  mission.  And,  indeed,  after  hear- 
ing him  at  that  convention,  I  could  not  help 
thinking  that  it  was  prayer,  or  rather  his  man- 
ner of  praying,  that  accounted  for  his  marvellous 
success. 

Whenever  he  rose  to  speak — and  that  was  quite 
often,  as  he  was  the  leading  figure  in  that  motley 


116       A  Missionan/s  Return  to  Judaism 

crowd  of  missionaries — he  would  first  fall  down 
on  his  knees  and  pray.  Instead  of  addressing 
his  prayer  to  "God  the  Father,"  as  the  average 
Christian  does,  he  would  invariably  begin  with 
"Dear  Jesus,"  and  would  repeat  this  phrase  in 
almost  every  sentence.  I  well  remember  one  of 
his  prayers.  After  duly  thanking  the  Lord  for 
the  privilege  of  working  for  so  great  a  cause,  he 
recited  the  hardships  and  privations  he  had  had 
to  undergo,  chief  of  which  was  a  lack  of  funds, 
and  he  urged  the  Lord  to  open  the  eyes,  hearts, 
and  minds  of  all  true  believers  to  the  paramount 
duty  of  spreading  the  Gospel  among  the  chosen 
people. 

As  he  proceeded,  his  fervor  increased,  until  he 
had  worked  himself  up  to  such  a  pitch  of  excite- 
ment that,  in  apparent  forgetfulness  of  the 
Gentiles  in  the  audience,  he  dropped  into  the  use 
of  his  mother  tongue,  the  Yiddish.  The  effect 
of  this  sudden  lapse  into  Yiddish  was  highly 
dramatic,  and  could  not  fail  to  make  a  deep 
impression  upon  a  susceptible,  pious  soul.  And, 
indeed,  after  the  meeting  I  overheard  someone, 
evidentlv   unaware   of   the   distinction   between 


The  Little  Saint  117 

Hebrew  and  Yiddish,  remark  to  his  neighbor: 
"I  was  never  before  so  deeply  moved !  Just  think 
of  it,  he  prayed  to  our  Savior  in  the  verj'  same 
kmguage  He  Himself  used  to  speak!" 

After  winding  up  his  prayer  in  English,  he 
rose  from  his  knees,  and,  standing  in  full  view 
of  the  audience,  he  wiped  his  eyes  with  a  neatlj* 
folded  silk  handkerchief,  while  at  the  same  time 
many  a  genuine  tear  was  flowing  from  the  eye;? 
of  the  believing  Christians  present. 

As  in  his  prayers,  so  in  his  speeches,  he  prac- 
ticed the  art  of  concealing  art.  He  appeared  to 
be  bubl)]ing  over  with  zeal  and  enthusiasm  for 
the  holy  cause.  His  jerky  style  of  oratory,  his 
wild  gesticulations,  his  entire  abandon,  his  oc- 
casional halting  for  words  to  express  his  over- 
flowing emotions,  were  all  well  calculated  to 
impress  the  pious  hearer  with  the  feeling  that 
here,  indeed,  was  a  man  guided  and  moved  by 
the  Holy  Ghost.  The  arguments  he  used  in  be- 
half of  Jewish  missions  were,  as  I  remember 
them,  of  the  stock-in-trade  variety;  but  his  style 
of  presenting  them  made  them  ai)pear  as  brand 
new. 


118       A  MhiiUniary's  Return  to  Judaism 

In  his  speeches  he  was  bokl  and  fearless.  While 
other  speakers  indulged  in  little,  miserable  lies 
about  the  good  work  they  were  doing,  and  timidly 
hinted  at  "quite  a  number  of  baptisms,"  he  stood 
up  boldly  and  told  the  audience  that  he  had  bap- 
tized thousands  of  Jews,  although  the  actual 
number  probably  was  no  more  than  twenty  in 
all.  Instead  of  expressing,  as  others  did,  a  vague 
and  indefinite  hope  that  many  Jews  Avould  in 
the  near  future  "accept  Christ,"  he  stated  his 
emphatic  belief  that  within  ten  years  at  the 
utmost  all  the  Jews  on  the  East  Side  of  New 
York  City  would  be  converted  to  Christianity, 
provided  that  Christians  gave  him  adequate 
support. 

After  each  session  he  hurried  back  to  his  hotel 
without  stopping  for  an  interchange  of  social 
courtesies.  When  the  great  Hillel  was  asked 
why  he  hurried  home  as  soon  as  he  had  con- 
cluded his  lectures,  he  replied  that  he  had  a  guest 
waiting  for  him,  the  guest  being  his  own  soul, 
which,  a  sojourner  on  this  earth,  must  be  enter- 
tained with  things  divine.  But  our  "little  saint" 
was  not  in  the  least  troubled  about  his  soul. 


TJie  Little  Saint  119 

What  was  waiting  for  liim  was  a  cigar,  and 
most  likely  a  good  one,  for  he  was  very  fond  of 
smoking,  but  he  could  not  very  well  afford  to 
let  his  admirers  know  it.  The  odor  of  tobacco 
is  deadly  to  the  odor  of  sanctity.  Who  could 
ever  think  of  St.  Paul  or  any  other  saint  with 
a  cigar  in  his  mouth? 

The  following  characteristic  narrative  of  a 
Sunday  spent  with  "the  little  saint"  was  given 
to  me  by  one  of  his  lieutenants.  I  will  repeat 
his  story  in  his  own  words,  as  far  as  my  memory 
serves  me,  and  the  reader  may  take  it  for  what 
it  is  worth. 

"When  I  arrived  at  the  house,  he  was  already 
in  the  dining-room.  We  sat  down  to  a  fine  break- 
fast, for  he  lived  like  a  prince.  There  was  nothing 
too  good  for  him.  He  had  even  a  red  silk  night 
gown.  Did  he  say  grace?  No.  We  were  all 
alone.  Presently  his  wife  enters.  She  is  dressed 
like  a  princess.  She  eats  heartily  of  the  good 
things  on  the  table,  but  says  nothing.  She  must 
be  thinking  of  her  beautiful  native  Russian  town, 
where  she  had  only  herring  for  breakfast,  but 
was  far  happier  than  now.    She  casts  occasional 


120       A  Missionarifs  Return  to  Judaism 

glances  at  the  mirror,  and  her  face  brightens  up. 
For,  after  all,  the  wife  of  the  wealthiest  man  in 
her  native  town  would  be  filled  with  envy  at  the 
sight  of  her  diamond  bracelets. 

"Breakfast  finished,  a  waiting  taxicab— street 
cars  are  too  common  for  him — brings  us  to  the 
railroad  station,  and  we  take  the  train  for  a  New 
Jersey  city,  where  he  is  billed  to  speak.  One  of 
the  most  prominent  citizens  of  the  place  takes 
us  to  his  residence,  where,  at  the  suggestion  of 
the  hostess,  'he'  is  shown  at  once  to  his  room 
so  as  to  be  by  himself  for  prayer  and  meditation. 
The  church  is  crowded  to  suffocation,  and  he 
makes  the  people  laugh  and  cry,  and  what  is 
more,  he  creates  so  much  enthusiasm  that  th(; 
pastor  of  the  church  embraces  him  in  the  pulpit 
while  the  people  sing  'All  Hail  the  Power  of 
Jesus'  Name.' 

"In  the  afternoon  he  addresses  the  Young 
Men's  Hebrew  Association.  The  chairman  pro- 
poses to  take  up  a  collection  for  "the  little  saint's' 
personal  use.  But  he  strenuously  objects,  de- 
claring his  w^ork  to  be  a  work  of  love,  and  that 
the  Lord  provides  for  all  his  simple  needs.     On 


The  Little  Saint  121 

our  way  back  I  expressed  my  surprise  at  his 
refusal  of  a  collection,  lint  lie  said,  'Never 
miud,  I'll  show  you  that  I  was  right,'  and,  sure 
enough,  the  next  day  he  showed  me  a  big  check 
sent  to  him  by  one  who  admired  'the  unselfish 
devotion  shown  at  the  Young  Men's  meeting.' 
And  how  much  do  you  suppose  that  scamp  gave 
me  for  going  with  him !  A  paltry  two  dollars !" 

Sudden  and  swift  as  was  his  rise  in  the  mis 
sionary  world,  his  fall  was  rather  slow  and  by 
easy  stages.  He  had  entrenched  himself  in  the 
hearts  of  a  few  powerful  and  influential  friends, 
who,  to  their  credit  be  it  said,  were  anxious 
to  protect  him  against  all  the  assaults  of  his 
enemies,  and  stood  by  him  as  long  as  they  had 
no  convincing  evidence  of  his  unworthiness. 
The  evidence,  however,  that  he  lived  far  beyond 
his  income,  and  far  below  his  reputation  as  a 
saint,  became  so  overwhelming  that  they  had  to 
give  him  up. 

How  did  he  get  "converted"? 

His  ante-Christian  life  is  not  so  well  authenti- 
cated as  his  anti-Christian  life.  Only  this  much 
seems  to   be  certain.     On  leaving  his  home  in 


l22      ^i  Missionanjs  Return  to  Judaism 

Russia,  he  went  to  Hamburg,  Germany,  where  he 
fell  in  with  a  Jewish  missionary  who  shipped 
him  over  to  England,  where  he  was  prepared  by 
the  missionary  fraternity  there  for  his  career  of 
sham  and  shame  in  this  country. 

Well  have  our  Talmudical  sages  said,  "Not 
the  mouse,  but  the  hole,  which  makes  the  thievery 
possible,  is  the  real  thief." 

In  the  last  analysis,  the  responsibility  for  the 
growth  and  development  of  a  "Little  St.  Paul" 
must  be  shouldered  by  those  who  organize  and 
maintain  Christian  missions  to  the  Jews. 


CHAPTER  IX 

THE  EVERLASTING  SCHNORRER 

One  evening  he  knocked  at  my  door.  It  was 
the  kind  of  knock  habitual  to  people  who  knock 
about,  a  timid,  "excuse  the  intrusion"  knock. 
But  he  entered  boldly,  shook  my  hands  joyfully, 
threw  himself  on  the  sofa  unceremoniously,  and 
started  to  talk  Mame  loslion  (Yiddish)  with 
great  relish,  having  been,  as  he  explained,  for 
weeks  past  among  the  Goyim  (Christians),  tha 
intercourse  with  whom  allowed  him  neither  the 
use  of  his  mother-tongue  nor  the  expression  of 
his  real  sentiments. 

Although  some  years  had  elapsed  since  last 
we  had  met,  he  was  not  changed  a  bit.  There 
was  the  same  reddish  face  with  a  drooping  blond 
mustache,  the  same  submissive,  sad  smile  hov- 
ered around  his  lips,  and  the  same  brand  of 
cigarette  between  his  tobacco-stained  fingers. 

He  was  bound  for  Florida  in  search  of  health, 

123 


124       A  Missionary's  Return  to  Judaism 

which  had  been  seriously  impaired  by  his  ardu- 
ous and  unremitting  labors  in  preaching  the 
Gospel  of  Christ  to  the  Jews.  That  was  what 
he  told  to  kind  Christians  whose  help  he  solicited. 
As  a  matter  of  fact,  however,  he  never  worked 
for  Christ  or  anybody  else,  and  the  meetings 
with  his  Jewish  brethren,  which  he  alleged  had 
undermined  his  health,  were  in  reality  held  in 
various  cafes  in  the  Roumanian  quarter  on  the 
East  Side  of  New  York,  and  were  of  a  spirituous 
rather  than  a  spiritual  nature. 

He  was  chatting  away  in  his  Mame  Joshon, 
telling  me  all  the  news  about  the  Jewish  work 
and  workers  "in  the  vineyard  of  the  Lord" — he 
knew  the  inside  history  of  almost  every  Jewish 
missionary,  and  I  looked  upon  his  as  a  "walking 
rogues'  gallery" — when  he  suddenly  stopped 
short,  tapped  his  forehead,  and,  fumbling  in  his 
pockets,  fished  out  a  sealed  letter,  which,  after 
having  carefully  and  deftly  unsealed  it,  he  begged 
me  to  read  to  him,  as  he  himself  was  unable  to 
read  or  write  anything  but  Yiddish.  It  will 
sound  almost  incredible,  yet  it  is  true  that  this 
very  same  man  had  in  his  possession  letters  of 


The  Everlasting  Schnorrcr  125 

undoubted  genuineness  from  preachers  and  pro- 
fessors of  theology  living  both  here  and  in  Eng- 
land, who  recommended  him  not  only  for  hid 
great  piety,  but  also  for  his  profound  learning 
and  extensive  knowledge  of  languages,  which,  in 
the  opinion  of  his  endorsers,  made  him  especially 
fit  for  the  missionary  work  among  the  Jews  be- 
cause of  his  ability  to  preach  to  the  Jews  of  all 
lands.  In  some  of  the  letters  he  was  even  given 
the  title  "Doctor." 

The  letter  he  was  so  anxious  to  learn  the  con- 
tents of  was  written  by  the  wife  of  a  prominent 
clergyman  of  Washington,  D.  C,  and  was  ad- 
dressed to  a  high  official.  The  writer  in  her  ap- 
peal in  behalf  of  the  bearer  describes  his  destitute 
condition,  of  which  she  had  sufficient  evidence 
by  the  fact  that  when  she  offered  him  some- 
thing to  eat  he  went  at  it  with  such  a  ravenous 
appetite  and  got  through  with  it  in  such  a  hurry 
that  it  proved  to  her  that  he  had  not  tasted  food 
for  days. 

At  this  passage  my  visitor  broke  out  in  a  loud 
laugh  and  said:  "In  the  first  place,  my  eating 
that  cold  luncheon  there  was  just  like  the  eating 


12G       A  Missionary's  Return  to  Judaism 

of  the  three  angels  in  Abraham's  tent,  namely, 
a  make-believe,  for  I  had  had  a  fine  breakfast  be- 
fore I  went  there.  I  put  most  of  the  bread  in  my 
pockets.  And  in  the  second  place,  I  hurried  to 
get  through  with  it  because  I  was  just  dying  for 
a  smoke.  "And  this  reminds  me,"  he  added  re- 
flectively, "that  I  am  just  dying  for  a  drink  of 
whiskey,  but  I  can't  take  a  drop  until  I  get 
through  this  prayer  meeting  to-night  to  which 
Pastor  S.  has  invited  me  to  come  and  tell  of  my 
work  among  my  benighted  Jewish  brethren.  To- 
bacco smell  is  bad  enough.  But  if  those  Metho- 
dists detect  the  faintest  breath  of  whiskey  about 
me  no  Shema  Yisroel  can  help."  (A  phrase 
equivalent  to   "I  am  past  praying  for.") 

When  he  called  the  next  day,  he  was  jubilant 
over  the  fine  results  produced  by  the  letter  whicli 
so  sympathetically  described  his  voracious — but 
not  veracious — appetite.  But  he  spoke  mourn- 
fully of  an  accident  that  had  befallen  him  the 
night  before.  Coming  from  the  prayer  meeting, 
he  noticed  a  saloon,  and,  believing  himself  at  a 
safe  distance  from  the  church,  he  entered  and 
tarried  there  a  while.    But  just  as  he  pushed  the 


The  Everlasting  Schnon-er  127 

swinging  doors  toward  the  street,  a  lady  who 
had  been  at  the  prayer  meeting  passed  by  and 
recognized  him.  She  was  horror-stricken  and 
dumbfounded  at  first.  But  soon  she  found  her 
voice,  and  let  go  at  him  with  no  uncertain  sound. 
In  her  unmerciful  tongue-lashing  she  repeatedly 
threatened  to  have  him  arrested  for  obtaining 
money  under  false  pretences.  In  his  plight  he 
fled  to  a  nearby  clothing  store,  whose  Jewish 
proprietor  became  his  savior  from  the  Christian's 
righteous  indignation. 

"Wasn't  that  lady  justified  in  accusing  you  of 
obtaining  money  under  false  pretences?"  I  ven- 
tured to  ask  him. 

"Sure  she  was,"  he  replied,  "but  I  am  not  the 
only  one  doing  it.  The  whole  bunch  of  mission- 
aries, and,  if  you  would  inquire  more  deeply 
into  the  matter,  lots  of  rabbis  and  ministers  are 
drawing  large  salaries  for  preaching  things  they 
themselves  don't  believe.  Besides,  these  goody- 
goody  Christians  owe  me  a  living,  and  it  is  a 
shame  that  I  have  to  go  around  and  collect  it.'' 

"Why  do  you  think  that  Christians  owe  you 
a  living?" 


128       A  Missionary's  Return  to  Judaism 

"Because,"  said  he,  "they  made  me  what  I  am, 
a  miserable  Schnorrer/' 

Lighting  a  fresh  cigarette,  he  closed  his  eyes 
dreamily  and  started  to  tell  me  the  story  of  his 
life.     It  was  a  pitiful  story  indeed. 

He  Avas  born  in  a  little  Roumanian  town, 
where  his  father  kept  a  small  general  store.  At 
the  age  of  sixteen  he  left  in  company  with  an- 
other lad  of  the  same  age  to  seek  their  fortune 
in  the  great  city  of  Vienna.  The  little  money 
they  had  between  them  was  soon  gone,  and  their 
search  for  work  was  unsuccessful.  One  day, 
while  the  tired  and  hungry  lads  were  sitting  on 
a  bench  in  the  Prater  (the  famous  park  of 
Vienna),  they  were  joined  by  a  prosperous  look- 
ing gentleman,  who  inquired  all  about  them,  and 
wound  up  by  leading  them  into  a  restaurant, 
where  he  paid  for  their  meals  and  gave  them  a 
few  pennies  besides.  After  meeting  them  the 
next  day  and  the  following  and  treating  them  in 
the  same  kindly  way,  their  newly-found  friend 
invited  them  to  his  home.  There  they  soon  dis- 
covered that  they  were  in  the  house  of  a  Jewisli 
missionary    supported   by    an    English    society, 


The  Everlasting  Schnorrer  129 

which  keeps  such  stations  in  all  the  principal 
cities  of  Europe.  The  boys  were  badly  fright- 
ened, and  wanted  to  leave  at  once,  but  the  assur- 
ance given  them  by  their  benefactor,  that  they 
were  not  expected  to  become  Christians  at  once, 
and  that  they  were  free  to  leave  any  time,  dis- 
pelled their  fears,  and  they  decided  to  remain 
overnight  at  least  and  enjoy  the  luxury  of  a  da^- 
in  such  a  fine  house.  On  retiring  to  their  room 
at  night  they  talked  long  and  hotly  about  the 
matter  and  fell  asleep.  In  the  morning  there 
Avas  onlv  one  bov  found  in  the  room.  The  othe." 
had  left  in  the  dead  of  night,  and  taken  with  him 
a  valuable  clock  that  stood  on  the  mantelpiece. 
He  left  a  note  containing  only  this  quotation 
from  some  Talmudical  authority:  "He  who  steals 
from  a  thief  is  guiltless."  This  lad,  by  the  way, 
has  achieved  success  and  fame  as  a  Rabbi  in 
Hungary. 

The  host  did  not  seem  to  be  very  much  put  out 
about  his  vanished  guest,  and  continued  to 
shower  his  kindness  upon  the  one  who  remained. 
A  few  months  of  ease  and  comfort  after  a  long 
])(M-i(»(l  of  li;ii-(ls]ii])  and  ]»i-ivnti<)us  were  l>(>und  to 


130       A  Missionary's  Return  to  Judaism 

overcome  the  conscientious  scruples  even  of 
stronger  characters  than  this  poor  Roumanian 
lad,  and  the  result  was  as  may  be  expected.  After 
his  baptism  he  was  sent  to  London  for  the  pur- 
pose of  learning  a  trade. 

There  he  was  much  made  of  by  the  wealthy 
patrons  of  the  Society  for  the  Promotion  of  the 
Gospel  among  the  Jews.  He  was  taken  around 
in  different  churches  to  be  used  as  an  illustration 
of  the  power  of  the  Gospel,  and  was  finally  so 
spoiled  for  all  honest  work  that  there  remained 
nothing  for  him  to  do  but  to  continue  to  live  on 
the  charity  of  well-meaning  Christians,  who  for 
the  sake  of  saving  "a  soul  from  the  burning  fire" 
often  cause  that  very  same  soul  to  freeze  to 
death. 

When  he  finished  his  story,  he  was  sobbing 
like  a  little  child. 

After  a  long  silence  I  said  to  him,  "Well,  old 
boy,  isn't  it  about  time  for  you  to  stop  this  mis- 
erable Schnorrerei?"  "This  same  question,"  lie 
answered  sadly,  "was  put  to  me  some  twenty 
years  ago  by  Dr.  Edersheim,  but  I  think  I  am 
doomed  to  go  on  till — well,  till  the  Messiah 
comes,"  he  added,  with  a  twinkle  in  his  eye. 


CHAPTER  X 

A  MISSIONARY  FREAK 

He  was  a  Jewish  missionary  and  an  honesi 
man ;  a  strange  creature  indeed.  For  it  is  easier 
for  a  camel  to  pass  through  the  eye  of  a  needle 
than  for  a  Jewish  missionary  to  keep  from  prac- 
ticing hypocrisy  and  deceit.  Yet,  as  the  Talmud 
has  it,  "A  myrtle  among  weeds  remains  a 
myrtle."  He  was  absolutely  truthful  and  honest, 
and  the  only  deception  he  may  be  accused  of  is 
that  of  leading  people  to  think  that  he  was  like 
the  other  missionaries. 

How  did  this  myrtle  happen  to  come  among 
the  weeds? 

Here  is  the  story  of  his  life  in  its  main  features, 
according  to  the  best  of  my  information. 

He  was  born  and  raised  among  the  Hasidim 
(the  pious  ones).  To  convey  to  the  general 
reader  an  exact  idea  of  what  the  Hasidim  are, 

131 


132       A  Missionary's  Return  to  Judaism 

would  roqiiiro  too  mncli  space.  They  might  be 
compared  with  the  ''shouting  Methodists,"  or 
still  better,  the  "Holy  Jumpers,"  whose  queer 
antics  are  occasionally  reported  in  the  papers. 
The  HasiOim  are  fervent  in  their  prayers, 
which  they  recite  with  a  great  deal  of  shouting 
and  even  dancing,  and  which  occupy  most  of 
the  day,  while  their  wives  are  tending  to  the 
shop  and  other  bread-winning  occupations.  They 
are  known  to  be  exceedingly  kind  and  helpful  to 
their  own,  but  very  bitter  to  those  who  ridicule 
or  oppose  them.  They  flourish  in  some  parts 
of  Russia  and  Galicia,  remote  from  the  main 
roads  of  modern  civilization,  to  which  they  are 
stoutly  opposed,  from  an  instinctive  fear  that 
modern  culture  blights  and  withers  all  religious 
emotion. 

Up  to  his  seventeenth  year  he  knew  no  other 
than  the  Hebrew  alphabet.  He  learned  the  Ger- 
man letters  from  a  stray  newspaper  he  had 
found,  which  he  kept  concealed  about  his  person 
for  fear  that  if  it  became  known  that  he  studied 
German,  he  would  be  looked  upon  as  a  renegade. 
His  hunger  foi-  a  uKxh'i-u  education  once  aroused 


A  Missionarfj  Freak  133 

was  bound  to  be  satisfiod,  and  so  he  went  t-j 
Breslan  and  later  to  Berlin,  where  his  great  in- 
tellectual ability  attracted  to  him  some  power- 
ful friends,  who  assisted  him  in  his  studies.  Be- 
fore he  reached  the  age  of  twenty-two,  he  had 
mastered  the  classical  and  a  few  modern  lan- 
guages, and  received  the  degree  of  doctor  of  jdiil- 
osophy.  Just  about  that  time  he  got  hold  of  a 
Xew  Testament,  and  some  Christian  theologians 
got  hold  of  him.  He  came  to  this  country  and 
entered  a  Christian  theological  seminary. 

A  little  incident  in  his  seminary  life  related 
to  me  by  one  of  his  fellow-students  is  character- 
istic of  the  man. 

The  students  among  themselves  had  collected 
a  little  money  to  buy  him  much-needed  eye- 
glasses. One  day  it  was  noticed  that  his  eye- 
glasses were  gone.  Being  pressed  for  an  ex- 
planation, he  told  them  how  he  had  met  a  poor 
Jewish  peddler,  with  a  large  famil}'  to  support, 
whose  need  for  eye-glasses  was  greater  than  his 
own. 

When  first  told  this  story  I  thought  it  was  too 
good  to  be  true.     But  after  getting  to  know  the 


134       A  Missionary's  Return  to  Judaism 

man  personally,  I  had  no  more  doubts,  as  I  found 
him  to  be  capable  of  any  self-sacrifice. 

His  theology  was  of  the  most  peculiar  kind. 
It  was  a  Joseph's  coat  of  many  colors,  a  crazy 
quilt  of  the  most  extraordinary  pattern,  a  hodge- 
podge of  Judaism  and  Christianity,  Avith  a  little 
of  other  "isms"  thrown  in.     His  idea  was  that 
when  a  Jew  becomes  a  Christian,  he  must  con 
tinue  to  observe  all  the  laws  of  Moses  relating 
to   Jewish  festivals  and  diet.     He  maintained 
that  only  the  Gentiles  were  exempt  from  the 
Jewish  law,  while  one  who  is  born  a  Jew  is 
obliged  to  observe  the  Jewish  law  even  after  he 
accepts   Christ.      This   view   is   vehemently   op- 
posed   by    most    Christian    theologians.      And 
rightly  so.     For  how  in  the  name  of  common 
sense  can  a  Jew  who  believes  in  Christ  be  ex- 
cluded from  the  Christian  heaven  and  its  high 
privileges  solely  because  he  bought  his  meat  at 
a  Christian  butcher  shop? 

Since  he  was  an  honest  man,  believing  a  thing 
implied  the  obligation  of  living  it.  Hence  his 
peculiar  theological  notions  led  him  into  the 
most  contradictory  and  absurd  modes  of  living. 


A  Missionary  Freak  135 

He  observed  both  Saturday  and  Sunday.  On 
Saturday  he  would  not  even  ride  in  a  street  ear. 
On  Friday  evenings  he  would  always  attend  the 
synagogue  and  heartily  join  in  all  the  prayers. 

His  diet  was  strictly  kosher.  If  entertained 
in  Christian  homes,  he  would  eat  only  cereals, 
eggs,  etc.  This,  of  course,  tried  the  patience  of 
the  hostesses.  Later  in  life  he  became  a  vege- 
tarian altogether. 

On  Yom  Kippur  (Day  of  Atonement)  he 
stayed  in  the  synagogue  all  day  and  fasted.  He 
also  observed  Tisha  B'ah,  and  was  an  ardent 
Zionist. 

In  order  to  spread  his  peculiar  views,  shared 
only  by  very  few  Christians,  and  perhaps  by  no 
other  Jew  living,  he  published  a  Hebrew  month- 
ly, which  was  eagerly  read  by  some  scholars  be- 
cause of  its  elegant  diction.  Being  too  poor  to 
continue  it,  he  would  go  up  and  down  the  coun- 
try and  preach  wherever  he  found  an  open  door. 
In  the  established  missions  for  Jews  he  was  not 
a  welcome  guest,  because  he  was  too  honest  and 
outspoken  to  approve  of  the  crooked  work  done 
there. 


JJ^>0       A  Mi.'i.'^ionaii/'s  lid  urn  to  Judaism 

In  his  travels  Tie  adhered  strictly  to  the  injunc- 
tion to  the  first  apostles  of  Christianity,  which 
was  to  the  effect  that  thev  should  not  burden 
themselves  too  much  with  things  needed  for  dress 
and  personal  comfort. 

When  he  gets  tired  of  travelling, as  he  naturally 
would,  he  retires  to  his  native  place  in  Galicia, 
where  a  Christian  friend  of  his  keeps  prepared 
for  him,  as  did  the  Shunammite  woman  for  the 
Prophet  Elisha,  a  bed,  a  table,  a  seat  and  a 
candlestick.  There  he  sits  surrounded  by  tons 
of  books  written  in  many  tongues,  and  works 
and  works  for  a  high,  false,  and  impossible  ideal. 
On  the  Sabbath  and  Jewish  holidays  he  comes 
to  the  synagogue,  visits  his  relatives,  with  whom 
he  sustains  the  most  cordial  relations,  and  oc- 
casionally drops  into  the  Beth  Hamidrash  and 
takes  part  in  the  Talmudical  discussions.  The 
townspeople  do  not  look  upon  him  with  the  usual 
feeling  of  hatred  shown  against  a  Meshumad 
(renegade).  Love  begets  love,  and  they  know 
how  intense  his  love  for  the  Jewish  people  is.  As 
for  his  queer  theological  notions,  they  think  that 
too  much  learning  has  turned  his  head,  and  in 
this  opinion  most  readers  are  likely  to  concur. 


CHAPTER  XI 

THE   MISSIONARY   SHAMMOS 

There  was  an  air  of  naturaluess  about  this 
happy-go-lucky  fellow,  which  differentiated  him 
from  the  commonplace,  ordinary  mission  worker. 
To  be  sure,  like  tlie  rest  of  them,  he  wore  a  mask, 
but  his  was  not  so  tight  and  close-fitting  as  to 
conceal  all  his  natural  features.  AVhile  other 
missionary  masqueraders  are  tortured  by  the 
constant  fear  lest  their  mask  come  off,  he  did  not 
seem  to  care  a  rap  whether  it  did  or  not. 
Suppose  it  did  fall  off,  there  was  always  his 
trade — that  of  a  baker — to  fall  back  upon.  And 
so,  taking  no  anxious  thought  either  of  the  past 
or  the  future,  he  seemed  to  enjoy  the  present  and 
be  as  "happy  in  Jesus"  as  his  financial  condition 
would  allow  him. 

His  duties  as  Shamiiios  (sexton)  of  the  mission 
were  numerous,  but  by  no  means  onerous.     The 

137 


138       A  Missionary's  Return  to  Judaism 

task  of  sweeping  and  cleaning  the  rooms  was  to 
him,  strong  and  healthy  as  he  was,  mere  child's 
play,  affording  him  just  enough  exercise  to  pro- 
mote the  digestion  of  the  enormous  quantities 
of  food  which  he  was  wont  to  consume.  He  was 
fond  of  good  eating,  or  rather  of  much  eating, 
caring  but  little  for  quality.  He  hated  nothing 
more — so  he  used  to  tell  me  after  we  had  be- 
come more  intimate — than  to  be  invited  out  to 
dine  with  some  of  the  fashionable  patrons  of  the 
mission.  If  he  was  bound  to  accept  such  an  in- 
vitation, he  would  first  go  to  some  cheap  res- 
taurant to  be  the  better  prepared  to  endure  the 
impending  thin  slices  of  meat  and  big  chunks  of 
religious  talk.  A  similar  provision  he  would 
make  when  any  of  the  missionary  patrons  were 
expected  to  dine  at  the  mission  house,  in  wliich 
case  the  missionary's  wife  wisely  reduced  the  bill 
of  fare  to  the  lowest  point  in  order  not  to  offend 
the  sensibilities  of  the  guests  who  might  be  dis- 
pleased at  seeing  "the  Lord's  money"  spent  for 
anything  but  the  bare  necessaries  of  life. 

In  addition  to  the  janitor's  work,  he  was  as- 
signed to  the  duty  of  keeping  order  at  the  meet- 


The  Missionary  Shammos  139 

ings,  and  he  fairly  revelled  in  the  performance 
of  this  rather  difficult  task.  His  strong  arm 
came  to  be  known  and  respected  by  all  who 
brought  to  the  meetings  an  exuberant  spirit  of 
frolic  and  fun.  If  any  of  them  showed  the 
slightest  inclination  to  break  up  the  meeting,  he 
would  raise  his  powerful  arm,  clench  his  fist,  and 
shout  at  the  top  of  his  voice,  "Say,  fellows,  if 
you  don't  shut  up,  I'll  make  you.  I'll  throw  you 
out  of  doors,  Christianity  or  no  Christianity!" 
In  case  his  warning  went  unheeded  he  would 
rush  at  the  offender,  lift  him  out  of  his  seat,  and 
shove  him  out  into  the  street  as  if  he  were  a  sack 
of  flour.  His  drastic  methods  of  dealing  with 
refractory  hearers  of  the  Gospel  were  of  course 
openly  disavowed  by  the  Christians  present,  but 
he  did  not  mind  their  rebuke,  because  he 
felt  sure  that  his  Christian  friends  inwardly  ap- 
proved and  admired  his  exhibition  of  "muscular 
Christianity." 

Equally  radical,  though  less  violent,  was  his 
method  of  dealing  with  the  Christian  friends  who 
assisted  at  the  meetings  by  their  praying  or 
preaching.     He  would    not  hesitate  to  whisper 


140       A  Missioiiari/'s  licturu,  to  Judaism 

into  the  oar  of  ilic  one  wlio  was  spiiniini;'  out  a 
long  prayer,  "The  Lord  knows  yon  have  ])raye(l 
hmg  enongh/'  or  to  liand  an  enthusiastic  speaker 
a  card  with  the  h^gend,  "There  are  others,"  or 
if  the  speaker  was  a  converted  Jew  and  therefore 
of  less  importance,  lie  would  write,  "You  are  iu)t 
the  only  pebble  on  the  beach."  If  these  gentU^ 
hints  were  disregarded,  and  there  was  danger 
that  the  meeting  wonld  encroach  npon  tlie  dinner 
hour,  he  wonld  apply  a  more  heroic  remed}', 
which  consisted  in  starting  to  sing  a  hymn.  If 
the  long-winded  individual  was  engaged  in 
prayer,  he  wonld — as  he  termed  it — "sing  him 
up";  if  in  preaching,  he  would  "sing  him  down." 

Besides  acting  as  beadle  and  bouncer,  he  was 
also  called  ui)on  to  offer  a  i)rayer,  and  give  a 
Christian  testimony,  both  of  ^\•hich  he  did  in  his 
own  way,  departing  from  the  beaten  track. 

Instead  of  kneeling  do^^■n  and  closing  his  eyes 
during  prayer,  he  prayed  standing  and  with  open 
eyes,  so  as  to  be  able  to  watch  the  nnruly  ele- 
ment in  the  audience.  Even  while  he  prayed,  he 
would  shake  his  fist  at  some  disturber,  the  incon- 
gruitv  of  which  act  was  not  noticed  bv  the  Chris- 


The  Missionary  Shammos  141 

tiaus  present,  who  had  their  eyes  closed.  His 
prayer  was  "mosaic"  in  the  sense  that  it  was  com- 
posed of  little  scraps  of  prayer  which  he  h;id 
picked  up  while  listening  to  the  prayers  of 
others,  and  which  he  would  string  together  with- 
out regard  to  logical  sequence.  He  only  prayed 
in  English,  and  refused  to  pray  in  Yiddish,  be- 
cause, as  he  explained,  a  Yiddish  Christian 
prayer  sounded  so  "funny." 

Of  his  Christian  testimony  he  had  two  sets — 
one  in  English  and  the  other  in  Yiddish.  His 
English  testimony  was  of  the  stereotyped  kind, 
telling  of  his  misery  and  wretchedness  of  soul 
before  he  became  a  Christian,  and  of  the  joy  and 
happiness  exj^erienced  the  moment  he  found  the 
promised  Messiah.  His  Yiddish  testimony  was 
more  original  and  ran  something  like  this : 

"We  are  in  Golus  (persecuted).  I  mean  you 
are.  I  am  not.  x\nd  why?  Because  I  have  ac- 
cepted Jesus.  You  are  fools  not  to  do  what  I 
did.  What  keeps  you  back?  Religion?  Bah! 
I  know  and  you  know  that  you  have  no  religion 
left.  If  you  were  religious,  you  would  not  bi' 
sitting  luM-c  in  lliis  Cln-istiau  place.    Come,  then. 


142      A  Missionary's  Return  to  Judaism 

and  be  sensible  people.  Receive  Jesus  and  he 
will  make  you  happy.  I  say  I  am  happy.  If 
anybody  thinks  I  am  a  liar,  he  is  another.  If  you 
hate  me  I  don't  care.  I  have  lots  of  Christian 
friends." 

And,  indeed,  a  better  acquaintance  with  his 
early  life  convinced  me  that  he  was  telling  the 
truth  when  he  said  that  he  was  happy  as  a 
Christian.  There  is  no  doubt  that  he  did  find 
much  happiness  in  Christianity,  though  his  ideal 
of  happiness  was  hardly  of  a  kind  a  Christian 
would  care  to  endorse. 

From  his  earliest  youth  he  had  struggled  hard 
to  live  without  working.  He  hated  work  more 
than  anything  else.  His  parents  and  relatives 
were  firmly  convinced  that  he  had  imbibed  his 
lazy  disposition  from  a  gypsy  woman  who  nursed 
him  while  his  mother  was  taking  care  of  a  twin- 
brother.  Whatever  may  be  thought  of  the  ex- 
planation, he  certainly  showed  the  great  re- 
pugnance to  steady  work  which  is  so  character- 
istic of  the  gypsies.  When  quite  young  he  was 
apprenticed  to  a  baker.  During  his  apprentice- 
ship he  deserted  his  master  several  times,  but 


The  Missionary  8hammos  143 

finally  he  was  graduated  as  a  journeyman.  Then 
he  started  to  travel  all  over  his  native  country — 
Hungary — looking  for  work  and  quitting  it  as 
soon  as  he  found  it.  More  than  once  he  was 
transported  home  under  police  escort  as  a 
vagrant,  to  the  utter  shame  and  disgrace  of  his 
family.  In  the  course  of  his  wanderings  he 
drifted  to  London,  England,  where  he  stopped  at 
the  Home  for  Journeymen  Bakers.  This  home 
was  visited  by  a  Jewish  missionary  twice  a  week, 
for  the  ostensible  purpose  of  holding  a  divine 
service  for  immigrants,  the  real  purpose  being 
to  get  some  new  recruits  for  the  mission.  The 
usual  bait  was  held  out  to  the  more  promising 
subjects,  who  were  invited  to  the  missionary's 
house  and  shown  the  beauty  of  the  "Christian" 
life.  Our  lazy  baker  fell  like  ripe  fruit  into  the 
missionary's  hand,  taking  to  the  "Christian"  life 
as  naturally  as  a  duck  takes  to  water.  After 
getting  a  few  months'  board,  two  brand  new  suits 
of  clothes,  twenty-five  pounds — more  than  he 
ever  possessed — he  was  duly  baptized  in  some 
fine  church.  He  was  not  quite  sure  whether  it 
was  Episcopalian  or  Presbyterian. 


144       A  Missionarifs  Return  to  Judaism 

Pretty  soon  the  missionary  got  rid  of  him  by 
buying  him  a  ticket  to  this  country,  where  on 
his  arrival  he  first  spcMit  every  cent  he  had,  and 
then  made  a  bee-line  for  the  Jewish  mission,  the 
Eldorado  of  all  haters  of  work  and  lovers  of  "the 
sweet  doing  nothing." 

His  life  at  the  mission  was  ideal  when  looked 
at  from  a  gypsy  point  of  view.  Besides  his  board 
and  lodging,  he  received  a  weekly  salary  of  eight 
dollars,  which  he  spent  in  supplementing  his 
regular  board,  too  scanty  for  his  prodigious  ap- 
petite, and  in  buying  drinks  and  cigars.  AVhile 
other  missionary  workers  indulge  in  the  tobacco 
habit  only  surreptitiously,  he  was  unafraid  to 
smoke  even  when  his  Christian  friends  could  see 
him.  Once,  when  rebuked  for  smoking,  he  re- 
plied :  "Didn't  you  speak  the  other  day  of  every 
converted  Jew  as  'a  brand  plucked  from  the  fire?' 
Well,  a  brand  smokes."  His  drinking,  however, 
was  done  more  discreetly.  He  had  a  preference 
for  places  frequented  by  Jews,  so  that  in  case 
his  Christian  friends  should  happen  to  see  him 
entei"  or  leave  he  might  explain  his  presence 
there  bv  a  tliii-st  for  Jewish  souls. 


The  Missionary  SJiammos  145 

Thus,  having  plenty  to  eat  and  drink  and 
smoke  without  much  exertion,  he  felt  happy  as  a 
Christian.  And  surely  nobody  could  more  cheer- 
fully accept  the  theological  doctrine  that  Christ 
has  abolished  the  primeval  curse  pronounced 
on  Adam,  "In  the  sweat  of  thy  brow  thou  shalt 
eat  bread." 

Nor  was  this  all.  In  addition  to  providing  him 
with  creature  comforts,  Christianity  had  been 
instrumental  in  satisfying  his  craving  for  honor 
and  distinction,  a  craving  which  belongs  to  the 
higher  class  of  emotions,  and  is  often  the  re- 
deeming feature  of  an  otherwise  low  and  sensual 
nature.  He  greatly  desired  to  be  looked  up  to 
as  a  person  of  some  importance  in  the  world. 
He  was  hungry  for  some  homage  to  be  paid  to 
him  by  at  least  a  few  of  his  fellow-beings,  over 
whom  he  could  lord  it.  Before  he  became  a 
Christian  he  was  looked  down  upon  by  every- 
body on  account  of  his  chronic  impecunious  con- 
dition. But  now  he  was  looked  up  to  as  a  man 
of  influence.  He  was  patted  on  the  back  by  Chris- 
tian patrons  of  the  mission,  and  the  mere  raising 


146       A  Missionary's  Return  to  Judaism 

of  his  arm  struck  terror  into  the  hearts  of  would- 
be  disturbers  of  the  meetings. 

But  the  appetite  for  distinction  and  glory 
grows  by  what  it  feeds  on,  and  after  a  few  years 
of  work  as  a  Shammos  our  erstwhile  baker  got 
tired  of  being  only  a  half-baked  missionary,  and 
decided  to  become  a  full-fledged  missionary. 
After  raising  the  necessary  "dough,"  he  started 
a  mission  of  his  own  in  a  Western  city.  For  a 
time  all  went  well.  He  knew  all  the  tricks  of  the 
missionary  business,  and  had  no  scruples  about 
practicing  them.  As  for  his  preaching,  he  had 
heard  so  many  sermons  while  he  was  a  Shammos 
that  he  had  no  trouble  about  repeating  some  of 
them.  But  while  he  had  energy  enough  to  over- 
come his  natural  laziness  and  to  carry  on  his 
mission  work,  the  strain  of  covering  up  the  in- 
dulgence in  the  tabooed  habits  of  drinking  and 
smoking  was  too  much  for  him.  Consequently 
the  flow  of  missionary  contributions  began  to  be 
slow  and  sluggish,  and  threatened  to  dry  up 
altogether. 

The  end  of  his  missionary  career,  however,  was 
rather  precipitous,  and  came  about  in  this  way : 


The  Missionary  Shatnmos  147 

He  had  just  finished  making  an  urgent  appeal 
for  money  at  a  ministers'  meeting,  when  the  next 
speaker,  a  colored  missionary,  who  was  seeking 
help  for  a  mission  among  his  own  people,  made 
a  slurring  remark  about  the  Jews.  The  Jewish 
missionary  interrupted  and  gave  the  colored 
brother  the  lie,  which  was  promptly  returned. 
Whereupon  the  Jew  ran  up  to  him,  and  smote 
him  in  the  face.  Requested  to  apologize  to  the 
ministers  present,  he  took  out  the  keys  of  his 
mission  rooms  and  threw  them  on  the  table.  On 
the  same  day  he  left  for  parts  unknown. 

Fifteen  years  later  I  was  walking  along  the 
Bowery  in  New  York  City  when  I  heard  my  name 
called.  Turning  round,  I  looked  into  the  smiling 
face  of  the  ex-missionary  Shammos.  He  was 
decked  out  like  Solomon  in  all  his  glory.  In  his 
necktie  glittered  a  big  diamond,  or  something 
that  looked  like  one,  and  a  heavy  gold  chain 
adorned  his  ample  waistcoat.  He  was  reticent 
about  the  source  of  his  evident  prosperity,  but 
from  some  slight  hints  he  threw  out  I  got  the 
impression  that  he  was  connected  in  some  way 


148       A  Missionarifs  Return  to  Judaism 

with  a  concern  that  was  selling  mining  shares  to 
over-confiding  people. 

Speaking  of  his  missionary  life,  he  said: 
"Christianity  has  learned  me  (I  quote  him 
literally)  that  money  is  power,  I  think,  if  a  man 
eats  Hazzer  he  should  eat  it  so  that  the  gravy 
runs  down  his  beard.  If  I  have  to  be  a  grafter, 
why  not  be  a  big  grafter?  Why  be  a  pickpocket 
if  you  can  be  a  bank  robber?  I  hate  those  petty 
thieves,  the  whole  Meshumodim  Gesindel.'^  On 
the  subject  of  religion,  he  delivered  himself  thus : 
"I  know  very  little  about  religion,  but  I  know 
as  much  as  most  of  the  religious  grafters.  I  am 
as  good  a  Jew  as  anvbodv,  and  if  anv  one  insuU?< 
a  Jew  in  my  presence  I  knock  him  down,  no 
matter  how  big  a  man  he  may  be." 

After  telling  me  of  his  bright  prospects  of 
making  big  money,  he  became  suddenly  remin- 
iscent, and  with  pride  in  his  manner  and  a  touch 
of  tenderness  in  his  voice,  he  exclaimed:  "But 
didn't  I  make  those  fellows  at  the  mission  be- 
have?" And  involuntarilv  he  raised  his  arm, 
still  powerful,  and  rolled  his  fingers  into  a  fisr, 
just  as  he  used  to  do  nearly  a  score  of  years  ago 


Tlie  Missionary  Shammos  149 

when  keeping  in  check  the  would-be  disturbers 
of  the  meetings  at  the  mission. 

How  strange,  I  thought  to  myself,  that  the 
only  feature  of  his  Christian  life  which  he  con- 
sidered worth  while  treasuring  up  in  his  mem- 
ory and  recalling  with  a  certain  pleasure  and 
pride  was  the  brief,  little  authority  which  he 
exercised  in  his  capacity  as  missionary  Shammos! 


CHAPTER  XII 

THE  MARCHER  TO  ZION 

It  was  the  last  day  of  the  camp-meeting  held 
every  year  at  Ocean  Grove,  the  famous  Methodist 
summer  resort  in  New  Jersey.  The  closing  cere- 
mony was  being  performed.  A  long  procession 
of  men  and  women,  young  and  old,  tall  and 
small,  headed  by  a  sprightly-looking  clergyman 
of  venerable  age,  was  marching  around  the  big 
auditorium,  singing  joyful  hymns.  Some  of  the 
old-timers,  disregarding  the  modern  tendency  to 
suppress  all  outward  show  of  religious  emotion, 
would  now  and  then  shout  out  heartv  "Hallelu- 
jahs,"  and,  as  their  fervor  increased,  would  un- 
consciously execute  some  bodily  movements 
which  came  very  near  to  dancing.  But,  then, 
did  not  David  dance  before  the  Holy  Ark? 

As  I  watched  the  animated  scene  from  the  gal- 
lery,  I  could  not  help  being  reminded  of  the 

150 


The  Marcher  to  Zion  151 

Ilakl'afof,  when  on  Simchas  Torah,  the  closing 
clay  of  the  Feast  of  Tabernacles,  the  scrolls  are 
taken  from  the  Ark,  and  carried  around  the  syn- 
agog  in  joyful  procession. 

And  there  rose  before  my  mind  the  venerable 
figure  of  my  father,  holding  tight  the  Sefer  Torah 
in  his  arms,  his  face  shining  and  his  eyes  spark- 
ling with  joy.  Once  again  I  was  trying  hard  to 
keep  step  with  my  father,  while  waving  a  little 
multi-colored  paper  flag,  the  material  for  which 
I  had  bought  out  of  my  own  savings,  and  the 
Hebrew  letters  on  which  I  had  painted  myself. 

Further  and  further  I  was  carried  away  from 
my  actual  surroundings,  while  the  thousand- 
voiced  chorus  was  singing  again  and  again  this 
refrain  of  a  well-known  hymn : 

"We  are  marching'  to  Zion, 
The  beautiful,  beautiful  Zion ; 
We   are  marching'   over  to   Zion, 
The  beautiful  city  of  God." 

These  pictures  of  the  past  were  suddenly  dis 
solved  by  the  sounds  of  a  whispered  conversation 
between  a  young  couple  sitting  next  to  me.     ^'I 
wonder   who   that    full-bearded,    stockily    built. 


152      A  Missionary's  Return  to  Judaism 

foreign-looking  clergyman  might  be?" — and  she 
continued  singing. 

"Search  me,  dearie" — and  he  continued  to 
steady  her  hand  which  held  the  hymn  book. 

"You  seem  to  know  nothing/'  she  said  pout- 
ingly. 

"I  don't  care  to  know  anything  or  anybody  in 
this  here  place  except  you."  The  hymn  book 
drops  to  the  floor,  and  he  hastily  picks  it  up  and 
joins  in  the  singing. 

"There  he  comes  again.  Doesn't  he  look  like 
a  Jew?" 

"Bather.  But  how  did  he  get  in  the  proces- 
sion?" 

"He  must  be  a  converted  Jew." 

"What's  that?  A  converted  Jew?  Tell  it  to 
Sweeney !" 

"Why,  yes,  dear;  one  who  has  become  a  Chris 
tian." 

"Well,  I  declare!  But,  converted  or  not  con- 
verted, I  wish  they'd  all  be  marching  to  Zion  or 
any  other  place  near  Jerusalem." 

"Here  your  ignorance  shows  up  again.  Zion 
isn't  a  place;  it  is  Heaven." 


The  Marcher  to  Zion  153 

"Be  it  so.  Let  them  all  go  to  Heaven.  America 
for  mine!" 

"Oh,  you  wicked  man!  Don't  you  believe  in 
Heaven?" 

"Of  course  I  do.  How  could  I  doubt  it  when 
I  look  into  your  eyes?"  And  the  hymn  l)ook 
trembled  in  her  hands. 

A  few  hours  later  I  met  the  subject  of  the 
preceding  dialogue  on  the  boardwalk  of  Asbury 
Park.  He  was  walking  alone.  Why  was  he 
alone?  Why  did  not  a  single  one  of  the  hundreds 
of  ministers  promenading  on  the  boardwalk  ac- 
company him?  Ah,  here  is  the  rub!  At  the  re- 
ligious meetings  he  was  made  much  of  as  a  fellow- 
worker  in  the  vineyard  of  the  Lord,  a  mighty  in- 
strument in  the  hands  of  the  Lord  for  the  preach- 
ing of  the  blessed  gospel  to  the  lost  sheep  of  the 
house  of  Israel,  and  thousands  of  Christian  men 
and  women  heard  him  gladly,  in  spite  of  his 
painful  abuse  of  the  English  language,  because 
they  enjoyed  the  rare  sight  of  a  Jew  preaching 
Christ.  But  the  bond  of  sympathy  between  the 
devout  Christians  and  the  converted  Jew,  Avhich 
manifested  itself  so  strongly  at  the  meetings  in 


154       A  Missionary's  Return  to  Judaism 

the  auditorium,  evidently  was  weakened  and 
loosened  as  soon  as  the  boardwalk  was  reached. 
There  the  devout  Christian  became  again  just  a 
plain,  nominal  Christian,  in  whose  eyes  the  con- 
verted Jew  is  after  all  only  a  Jew. 

I  found  him  to  be  in  a  very  unhappy  frame  of 
mind.  Only  a  few  months  before  his  eldest  son, 
a  youth  of  great  promise,  had  been  accidentally 
drowned  while  bathing.  His  wife,  he  told  me,  who 
had  come  with  him  to  the  sea-shore  for  a  little 
recreation,  had  been  obliged  to  return  to  th3 
city,  as  she  could  not  bear  the  sight  of  the  ocean 
whose  cruel  waves  had  killed  her  boy.  In  ad- 
dition to  this  heavy  blow,  he  suffered  financially 
by  the  appearance  on  the  scene  of  another  Jew- 
ish missionary,  who  suddenly  bobbed  up  during 
the  religious  meeting  just  closed.  This  new- 
comer, being  affiliated  with  the  Methodist  church, 
strongly  appealed  to  the  sectarian  feeling,  and 
succeeded  in  diverting  from  him,  the  Presby- 
terian, some  of  the  usual  missionary  donations. 

His  torrent  of  denunciations  directed  against 
this  rascally  rival  was  interrupted  by  a  sweet- 
faced  girl  of  about  eighteen,  who,  running  up  to 


The  Marcher  to  Zion  155 

him  caressingly,  said :  "Pa,  may  I  go  with  Max 
for  a  trolley  ride?"  He  consented  reluctantly, 
and  she  hurried  away. 

"Does  she  look  like  a  Jewess?"  he  asked  me 
with  some  anxiety. 

"No,  she  looks  like  half  a  dozen  of  them,"  I 
answered,  somewhat  irritated  at  his  foolish 
question. 

After  a  long  pause  he  exclaimed :  "This  girl  of 
mine  causes  me  great  sorrow.  That  young  man 
Max  she  goes  with  is  a  Jew,  the  son  of  a  push- 
cart peddler,  and  she  will  have  nobody  about 
her  but  him.    What  shall  I  do?" 

I  was  relieved  from  expressing  any  opinion  on 
this  perplexing  point  by  the  approach  of  an  old 
lady,  who,  in  true  Methodist  fashion,  shook  my 
companion's  hand  warmly,  and  blurted  out :  "I'm 
so  glad  to  see  you.  Ever  since  I  was  a  young- 
girl  and  started  to  read  the  Holy  Book,  I  was 
wondering  what  became  of  the  ten  tribes  of  Israel 
who  were  led  into  captivity  by  the  wicked  King 
Kebuchadnezzar.  I  am  sure  you  will  be  able  t(/ 
tell  me." 

"They  were  assimilated  by  the  other  nations," 


156       A  Missionary's  Return  to  Judaism 

he  answered  readily,  evidently  having  heard  this 
question  before. 

"But  how  can  a  Jew  ever  become  a  Gentile?" 

After  a  moment's  thought  he  replied:  "Oh, 
that  happened  under  the  Old  Dispensation,  you 
know."  His  questioner  seemed  to  be  well  pleased 
with  the  answer,  and  departed  with  effusive 
expressions  of  thanks. 

"What  a  handy  thing  this  phrase  of  'Old  anil 
New  Dispensations'  is !  It  grants  you  dispeiisa- 
tion  from  deeper  study  of  Biblical  problems,"  I 
remarked  gaily,  trying  to  cheer  him  up  a  little. 

But  my  efforts  in  this  line  sadly  failed.  He 
had  lost  the  precious  sense  of  humor  which  has 
helped  the  Jewish  race  to  bear  up  under  the  most 
adverse  circumstances,  and  had  become  dis- 
gruntled, disappointed,  and  discouraged.  And 
yet  not  so  many  hours  ago  he  had  told  in  open 
meeting  "how  good  the  Lord  had  been  to  him 
ever  since  his  acceptance  of  Christ,"  and  how 
"peace  like  a  river  encompasses  his  soul." 

When  I  told  him  of  how  the  procession  in  tlie 
auditorium  had  reminded  me  so  much  of  the 
Hakkafoty  and  wanted  to  know  whether  he  hjid 


The  Marcher  to  Zion  157 

the  same  experience,  he  looked  at  me  with  dull 
and  lustreless  eves,  and  said:  "All  the  time  I 
walked  in  the  procession  I  was  greatly  troubled 
in  my  mind.  Just  before  I  got  into  line  a  lady 
handed  me  a  gift  of  money  in  a  sealed  envelope. 
I  could  not  open  it  Avithout  being  observed,  and 
so  I  was  curious  and  anxious  all  the  while  to 
know  how  much  it  contained." 

Thus  the  present  rather  than  the  past  filled 
his  mind  while  "Marching  to  Zion." 

Poor  fellow!  He  has  since  joined  the  great 
procession  to  the  grave,  and  his  soul  is  surely 
now  at  rest,  at  least  as  to  the  contents  of  sealed 
envelopes. 

But  why  am  I  relating  all  this?  Simply  to 
amuse  the  reader?  Not  at  all.  What  I  want  to 
get  at  is  the  sad  truth  that  you  and  I,  together 
with  the  most  modern  Jews,  are  doing  exactly, 
though  with  less  sordid  and  mean  motives,  what 
that  "converted"  Jew  did  at  Ocean  Grove,  while 
the  people  in  the  gallery  talk  about  us  in  a 
similar  strain.  Do  we  not  march  in  all  kinds  of 
processions  and  sing  all  sorts  of  songs  but — 


158      A  Missionary's  Return  to  Judaism 

those  of  Zion?  Do  we  not  dance  to  every  fiddle 
but — to  the  Harp  of  David? 

And  yet  this  "protective  mimicry,"  as  Zano- 
will  so  significantly  calls  it,  saves  us  not  from 
mockery  and  malice.  In  Germany  they  still  hoot, 
in  South  Wales  they  loot,  and  in  Russia  they 
shoot. 

Where  is  the  remedy  to  be  found? 

The  only  answer  that  goes  to  the  root  of  the 
matter  is  that  given  some  fifteen  years  ago  by 
Dr.  Theodor  Herzl.  This  great  and  noble  Jew, 
recognizing  the  futility  of  all  the  remedies  ap- 
plied to  the  wounds  of  Israel,  hit  upon  a  radical 
remedy,  which  would  not  only  cure  but  also 
prevent  disease.  Like  Daniel  of  old,  he  opened 
his  windows  toward  Jerusalem,  where  he  beheld 
the  glory  of  a  revived  Jewish  nation.  Was  Herzl 
a  visionary?  Yes,  indeed!  and  so  was  Mazzini, 
who  had  visions  of  Italian  greatness  before  there 
was  an  Italy;  and  so  was  Bismarck,  the  unifier 
of  Germany.  Must  not  every  great  achievement 
be  first  seen  in  a  vision  before  it  assumes  a  real 
and  actual  form? 

Dr.  Herzl's  ideas,  first  expressed  in  his  book, 


The  Marcher  to  Zion  159 

Der  Judenstaat,  gave  birth  to  Zionism,  which, 
"aims  to  create  for  the  Jewish  people  a  publicly, 
legally  secured  home  in  Palestine." 

Emerson  says  somewhere  that  every  new  truth 
has  to  pass  through  three  stages  before  it  is 
generally  accepted.  On  its  first  presentation 
people  simply  say,  "It  ain't  so";  a  little  later 
people  say,  "The  Bible  contradicts  it" ;  and  finally 
they  say,  "We  all  knew  that  before."  Zionism, 
it  seems,  has  successfully  passed  through  the  first 
two  phases,  and  is  now,  as  it  were,  on  the  home 
run.  There  are  few  men  of  intelligence  and 
Jewish  feelings  who  would  deny  that  Zionism 
is  the  key  to  the  solution  of  the  Jewish  problem, 
and,  if  they  still  refuse  to  enlist  in  the  Zionist 
movement,  it  is  because  they  think  that  it  is  im- 
possible of  realization.  The  many  objections 
they  raise  against  the  practicability  of  Zionism 
have  been  fully  considered  and  refuted  by  able 
and  learned  advocates  of  Zionism.  But  there  is 
one  objection  which  I  will  mention,  for  the  rea- 
son that  by  my  past  experience  and  observation 
I  am  peculiarly  fitted  to  answer  it.  I  refer  to 
the  argument  against  Zionism  which  takes  for 


IGO       A  Missionarifs  Return  to  Judaism 

its  ground  the  hostile  attitude  which  Christians 
would  be  sure  to  assume  against  the  rise  of  a 
Jewish  commonwealth.  Christian  nations,  it  is 
asserted,  will  never  allow  a  Jewish  state  to  come 
into  existence,  and  if  bj  chance  such  a  state 
should  be  established,  they  would  use  all  their 
influence  to  destroy  it. 

Formidable  as  this  objection  looks,  it  is  to  my 
mind  hollow  and  groundless,  because  it  is  based 
upon  an  utter  ignorance  of  the  feelings  of  Chris- 
tians on  this  matter.  The  assumption  that 
Christians  would  not  tolerate  the  existence  of 
an  independent  Jewish  commonwealth  is  abso- 
lutely false.  In  my  contact  with  Christians  of 
all  sorts  and  conditions  I  have  taken  special 
pains  to  ascertain  their  attitude  toward  Zionism, 
and  I  have  not  found  a  single  one  whose  Christian 
consciousness  was  alarmed  or  agitated  in  the 
least  degree  over  the  prospect  of  the  re-establish- 
ment of  a  Jewish  state. 

As  a  matter  of  fact,  most  orthodox  Christians 
believe  and  look  for  that  very  event  as  one 
of  the  things  prophesied  both  in  the  Old 
and  New  Testaments.    In  almost  all  the  orthodox 


The  Marcher  to  Zion  161 

Christian  text-books  used  in  colleges  and  semin- 
aries you  will  find  under  the  heading  of  eschat- 
ology  (the  docrtine  of  the  last  or  final  things) 
the  future  restoration  of  Israel  to  his  own  coun- 
try. And  even  those  Christians  who,  following 
the  modern  tendency,  do  not  feel  themselves 
bound  by  the  letter  of  the  Scriptures,  and  are  in- 
clined to  take  the  prophecies  of  the  Bible  as  mere 
pious  wishes,  which  may  or  may  not  be  fulfilled, 
will  certainly  have  no  other  feeling  than  that  of 
gratification  at  the  literal  fulfilment  of  the  old- 
time  prophecies. 

The  only  j)ossible  misgiving  a  zealous  Chris- 
tian may  have  in  regard  to  Zionism  is  the  pres- 
ence in  Jerusalem  of  the  Holy  Sepulchre  and 
other  time-hallowed  monuments  dear  to  every 
Christian  heart.  The  plan  to  make  all  those 
places  "extra-territorial  ground,"  to  be  owned 
and  controlled  by  an  international  Christian 
commission  created  for  the  purpose,  appears  to  be 
an  excellent  one  and  well  calculated  to  dispel  all 
doubts  and  misgivings  arising  from  this  source. 

But  while  it  is  true  that  the  idea  of  Zionism 
is  far  from  being  repugnant  to  the  Christian  con- 


162       A  Missionarifs  Return  to  Judaism 

sciousness,  but  is  rather  in  accord  with  Christian 
teachings  and  sentiments  concerning  the  Jewish 
future,  it  would  be  nevertheless  a  great  mistake 
to  conclude  therefrom  that  the  Christian  nations 
will  readily  support  and  favor  it,  since  what 
Christianity  teaches  is  one  thing  and  what  Chris- 
tian nations  do  is  quite  another  thing. 

The  Russian  bear,  for  one,  is  not  likely  to  favor 
Zionism,  and  it  may  take  a  little  sharp  prodding 
in  his  sides  to  make  him  release  his  paws  from 
the  throats  of  his  victims.  It  is  recorded  of  old, 
"And  the  children  of  Israel  went  up  armed  out 
of  the  land  of  Egypt,"  and  the  modern  Jew  may 
have  to  fight  his  way  out  of  Russia.  Yes,  "March- 
ing to  Zion"  will  probably  be  somewhat  more 
strenuous  than  walking  down  the  gang  plank 
of  a  well-appoinetd  steamer  for  Jaffa.  But  what 
of  it?  A  people  that  is  not  willing  to  fight  for 
liberty  will  never  be  free. 

Who  knows  but  that  the  brave  young  Russian 
Jews  who  now  risk  their  lives  in  the  cause  of 
Russian  freedom  will  at  last  realize  that  they 
can  serve  the  cause  of  freedom  best  by  fighting 
their  way  out  of  the  enemy's  country  into  the 


The  Marcher  to  Zion  163 

land  that  is  waiting  for  her  own  children  to  come 
back,  build  up  the  waste  places,  and  make  it 
blossom  like  a  rose? 

Israel's  glory  mav  be  revived  and  far  outshine 
the  past  by 

"Entwining  memories  of  olden  time 
With   virtues    new    and    more    sublime." 


CHAPTER  XIII 

A  SELF-STYLED  EX-KABBI 

On  aceonnt  of  liis  being  an  exceptionally  bad 
case  of  fraiuliilent  and  pernicious  missionary 
activity,  I  must  make  an  exception  in  one  case, 
and  mention  the  name  of  the  missionary  of  whom 
this  chapter  is  to  treat. 

He  advertises  himself  freely  as  "the  con- 
verted ex-Rabbi  Leopold  Cohn."  This  descrip- 
tion of  himself  is  about  as  correct  as  the  defini- 
tion given  by  a  school-boy  of  a  lobster  as  a 
red  fish  that  crawls  backward.  For  he  is  neither 
converted — in  the  true  Christian  sense — nor  is 
he  an  ex- Rabbi.  He  is  not  even  Leopold  Cohn, 
according  to  transcripts  made  from  ofticial  Hun- 
garian court  records  on  file  in  the  county  court 
house  of  the  city  of  Maramaros-Sziget,  Hungary, 
These  records,  together  with  positive  statements 
obtained  from  residents  of  New  York  who 
knew  "Mr.  Cohn"  in  the  old  country,  prove  con- 

164 


A  Self-styled  Ex-RahU  165 

clusively  that  Mr.  Cohn  assumed  his  present 
name  on  his  arrival  in  this  country,  some  twenty 
years  ago,  and  that  he  never  was  the  Rabbi  of  a 
congregation  in  his  native  country,  as  he  claims 
in  his  book,  entitled  "A  Modern  Missionary  to  an 
Ancient  People,"  and  in  his  lectures  in  the 
churches.  His  occupation  in  the  old  country 
was  that  of  an  inn-keeper  in  the  town  of  Apsicza, 
county  of  Maramaros-Sziget,  Hungary. 

Although  the  New  York  Yiddish  newspapers 
of  May  19,  1913,  published  his  picture,  together 
with  the  statement  that  he  was  posing  before  the 
public  under  a  false  name,  he  has  made  no  effort 
to  invoke  the  law  in  vindication  of  his  name.  Is 
it  because  he  hates  to  go  to  law  and  prefers  to 
suffer  in  silence?  It  can  hardly  be  that,  because 
he  appears  very  often  as  a  plaintiff  in  the 
Brooklyn  courts.  For  instance,  some  time  ago 
the  Brooklyn  newspapers  reported  that  he 
had  had  several  boys  arrested  for  stealing  lead 
pipes  from  one  of  the  houses  he  owns  in  South 
Brooklyn,  and  when  the  magistrate  mercifully 
refrained  from  sending  them  to  prison,  where 
they  might  develop  into  real  criminals,  Mr.  Cohn 


16G       A  Missionary's  Return  to  Judaism 

bitterly    complained    about    a    miscarriage    of 
justice. 

While  other  missionaries  threaten  the  dis- 
turbers of  their  meetings  with  arrest,  and  in  ex- 
treme cases  have  them  arrested  and  let  them  go 
with  a  reprimand,  Mr.  Cohn  is  quick  in  arresting 
a  disturber  of  his  meetings  on  the  slightest 
provocation,  and  in  several  instances  he  is  re- 
ported to  have  insisted  that  the  disturbers  be 
sent  to  jail. 

It  is  therefore  safe  to  assume  that  Mr.  Cohn's 
unwillingness  to  take  action  against  the  news- 
papers and  others  that  spread  uncomplimentary 
reports  is  not  inspired  by  Christian  humility 
and  forbearance,  but  is  rather  due  to  the  over- 
whelming evidence  contained  in  the  official  Hun- 
garian records. 

But  even  if  his  claim  to  be  ex-Rabbi  Leopold 
Cohn  be  allowed,  there  must  be  serious  protests 
raised  against  his  claim  to  be  converted  to 
Christianity.  There  is  hardly  anything  in  his 
conduct  to  show  that  he  is  truly  converted  to 
Christianity,  and  a  great  deal  that  tends  to  show 
that  he  is  not. 


A  Self-SUjled  Ex-Rahbi  167 

Would  a  truly  converted  man  pick  up  ac- 
quaintance with  a  young  girl  whom  he  does  not 
intend  to  marry  and  take  her  to  restaurants 
where  liquor  is  sold  and  to  variety  shows? 

Mr.  Cohn  did,  as  was  brought  out  at  a  trial 
held  on  February  10-11,  1913,  in  the  New  York 
City  Magistrate's  Court,  when  Mr.  Cohn  ap- 
peared as  plaintiff  against  one  of  his  own  con- 
verts. I  quote  this  significant  passage  from  the 
court  stenographer's  minutes: 

By  tlie  cross-examiner. 

Q.     Mr.   Cohn,  you  have  testified  that  you  didn't  go  to 

saloons   or   theatres   until   Mr.   induced    you   to   go 

with  him.  Did  you  or  did  you  not  ever  go  to  a  restaurant 
where  intoxicating  liquors  were  served  with  (name  of 
lady  omitted)  ? 

A.     Yes,  sir. 

Q.     When  was  that? 

A.     That  was  some  time  a  week  or  two  after  we  met. 

Again,  would  a  truly  converted  man  tell  a  lie 
for  the  sake  of  gain? 

Mr.  Cohn  did,  as  may  be  seen  from  the  follow- 
ing article,  which  appeared)  over  his  signature 
in  a  religious  magazine  called  Watchword  and 
Truth.     This  article,  though  quite  lengthy,  will 


168      A  Missionan/s  Return  to  Judaism 

repay  perusal,  showing  as  it  does  that  people  are 
expected  to  believe  the  most  absurd  things  in 
relation  to  the  Jews. 

The  article  reads  as  follows : 

That  the  Jew  is  looking  for  the  Messiah  is  illustrated 
in  a  very  interesting  manner  by  the  following  incident  in 
the  work  in  which  I  am  engaged  among  the  250,000  Jews 
of  Brooklyn,  N.  Y. 

On  Moore  Street,  in  the  Williamsburgh  Mission  fields 
where  the  children  of  Israel  are  dwelling,  a  fearful  sight 
occurred  one  day  recently.  As  the  crowds  were  surging 
up  and  down  the  street,  peddlers  howling  and  shouting  to 
sell  their  goods,  women  driving  bargains  and  hundreds  of 
children  j^laying  in  the  gutters,  suddenly  there  was  con- 
sternation among  them.  A  small  group  of  Jews  stopped, 
turned  aside,  lifted  up  their  faces  toward  heaven  and 
looked  with  a  steady  gaze  into  the  skies.  All  the  business 
and  curmoil  around  were  dead  to  them,  they  stood  there 
craning  their  necks  upwards  as  if  hypnotized.  Soon  the 
group  grew  into  larger  dimensions,  until  a  multitude  was 
gathered,  all  deeply  engrossed  in  that  sight  in  which  the 
small  group  was  so  much  interested. 

Before  long  all  the  people  living  in,  or  passing  by,  that 
neighborhood  did  likewise,  and  the  entire  vicinity  was 
held  under  a  spell,  which  looked  as  if  all  were  dead. 
There  was  no  noise,  no  talking,  no  motion,  but  an  awful 
foreboding  silence  ruled  the  street.  They  saw  a  cloud 
appear    above    them    which   formed    itself    into    the    figure 


A  Self-styled  Ex-Ruhbi  169 

of  a  crucified  man.  There  was  not  one  among-  them  that 
did  not  feel  awe-stricken  at  that  siglit.  They  knew  some- 
thing about  the  Crucified  One,  some  bj'  the  fact  that  they 
had  been  to  the  mission,  and  others  by  hearsay. 

Now  this  Crucified  One  seemed  to  approach  this  earth 
and  right  at  their  busiest  place.  They  had  been  hating 
and  despising  Him  and  now  He  was  coming!  ^^^tlat  a 
terror !  There  were  among  them  some  converts  of  the 
mission,  especially  a  man  and  wife  who  had  been  recently 
baptized,  to  see  them  it  was  a  joy.  They  were  waiting 
anxiously  to  see  Him  come  down,  for  they  had  read  in  the 
New  Testament  that  "the  same  Jesus  will  come  again  in 
a  cloud,  as  a  cloud  received  Him  out  of  their  sight." 

For  a  s^jace  of  about  five  minutes  the  whole  crowd  was 
held  breathlessly  gazing  with  their  pale  faces  upward, 
watching  tha+  figure.  Not  a  word  was  uttered  by  one,  as 
they  did  not  know  what  to  think  of  it  and  what  to  do 
about  it.  To  their  unexpected  relief  the  cloud  began  to 
change  its  form,  and  gradually  disappeared  into  endless 
space. 

From  the  conversation  they  had  afterwards,  it  appeared 
that  everyone  had  the  more  or  less  serious  suspicion  that 
it  was  the  Messiah.  Was  this  a  foretaste  of  what  will 
take  place  in  this  busy  world  when  the  Lord  Jesus  Christ 
comes  again  to  this  sinful  earth?  Those  that  despise  and 
reject  Him  now  will  be  awe-stricken  at  His  appearance, 
but  those  who  believe  in  Him  now  will  rejoice  with  an 
exceeding  joy.     Even  so,  come,  Lord  Jesiis." 

The  average  reader  will  consider  the  foregoing* 


170       A  Missionanfs  Return  to  Judaism 

article  sufficient  to  prove  tliat  its  author  hoVls 
the  truth  in  light  regard,  and  that  the  incideit 
related  therein  with  so  much  detail  and  sancti- 
monious trimmings  is  a  fabrication  pure  and 
simple,  especially  in  view  of  the  fact  that  the 
daily  papers  of  this  great  city,  always  on  the 
alert  for  extraordinary  happenings,  have  not 
recorded  this  miraculous  phenomenon. 

Mr.  Cohn,  however,  might  still  insist  that 
what  he  and  he  alone  reports,  has  actually  hap- 
pened. 

Let  me  therefore  give  another  proof  of  Mr. 
Cohn's  utter  disregard  for  the  truth.  I  quote 
from  the  court  stenographer's  minutes  of  a  trial 
held  before  Justice  Stephen  Callaghan  in  the 
Brooklyn  Municipal  Court,  on  December  19, 
1913,  when  the  lawyer  he  had  employed  in  the 
case  mentioned  above,  sued  Mr,  Cohn  for  non- 
payment of  professional  services. 

Mr.  Cohn  is  on  the  witness  stand  and  under 
oath. 

Q.     What  are  you  worth  today? 

A.     Do  you  mean  how  much  money  I  have? 

Q.     Any  property,  real  estate. 


A  SeeJf-SUjJed  Ex-RahU  171 

Q.  by  the  Court :  \Miat  are  your  assets  over  your  lia- 
bilities? 

A.     About  ten  thousand  dollars. 

Q.  You  have  a  country  estate  in  Connecticut,  haven't 
you? 

A.     Yes. 

Q.     And  you  have  a  house  at  183  Van  Buren  Street? 

A.     Yes. 

Q.  You  have  a  large  tenement  property,  you  have  a 
piece  of  property  adjacent  to  the  Mission,  haven't  you? 

A.     No. 

Q.     You  have  not? 

A,     No. 

Q.     Is  that  piece  of  property  in  the  name  of  your  son? 

A.     I  don't  know  if  my  son  has  it. 

Q.  At  how  much  do  you  estimate  the  value  of  your 
property  at  183  Van  Buren  Street? 

A.     My  son  has  a  part  in  that. 

Q.     by  the  Court :    Just  the  part  you  own. 

A.     I  gave  an  estimate  of  about  ten  thousand  dollars. 

Q.     In  Van  Buren  Street? 

A.  No,  sir.  The  house  in  Van  Buren  Street  is  under 
a  mortgage. 

Q.  You  own  another  piece  of  property  that  is  assessed 
at  about  thirty  thousand  dollars? 

A.     No,  sir. 

Q.  You  made  that  money  in  this  mission  business, 
haven't  you? 

A.  No,  sir.  I  did  not  make  the  money  in  the  Mission, 
your  Honor.    I  had  the  money  from  the  old  country. 


172       A  Missionary's  Return  to  Judaism 

Let  us  look  for  a  moment  at  Cohii's  testimony 
just  quoted.  He  testified  tliat  he  had  the  money 
from  the  old  country.  This  contradicts  the 
statement  which  he  makes  in  his  book  entitled 
"A  Modern  Missionary  to  an  Ancient  People." 
There,  in  describing  his  sufferings  for  the  sake 
of  preaching  the  Gospel,  he  says :  ^'I  had  nobody 
to  help  me  financially.  I  pawned  her  (his  wife's) 
last  piece  of  jewelry,  which  I  never  redeemed  for 
her."  "I  had  no  bread  to  offer  to  my  children 
with  a  cup  of  tea  I  had  for  their  lunch."  "The 
children  had  to  return  to  school  without  bread" 
(pj).  42-43).  Now  either  he  lied  on  the  witness 
stand  or  in  his  book.  I  am  inclined  to  accept  his 
book  statement  as  true,  for  anyone  knowing  Mr. 
Cohn's  family  and  their  station  in  life  in  the  old 
country  would  consider  it  utterly  absurd  to 
think  for  a  moment  that  Leopold  Cohn  obtained 
money  from  home  to  buy  Brooklyn  real  estate. 

In  passing  it  may  be  interesting  to  note  that 
the  son  referred  to  in  Mr.  Cohn's  testimony  as  a 
part  owner  of  the  property  on  Van  Buren  Street, 
is  Mr.  Joseph  Cohn,  who  is  engaged  in  travelling 
all    over    the    country    and    appealing    in    the 


A  Self-styled  Ex-RaUi  173 

churches  for  aid  in  behalf  of  his  father's  mission. 
Mr.  Joseph  Cohn,  besides  being  the  field-secre- 
tary, is  also  the  official  treasurer  of  the  mission. 

Xow  this  "converted  ex-Eabbi  Leopold  Cohn'' 
claims  in  his  advertisements  that  he  "has  been 
missionary  to  the  250,000  Jews  of  Brooklyn  for 
the  past  twenty  years,  and  his  labors  have  been 
remarkably  blessed  of  God." 

It  would  be  remarkable  indeed  if  Mr.  Cohn's 
labors  should  have  been  blessed  of  God!  Mr. 
Cohn  would  honor  God  more  by  being  less 
modest  and  claiming  the  sole  credit  for  the  suc- 
cess of  his  labors.  For  what  is  the  result  of  his 
twentv  vears'  work?  He  does  not  state  how 
many  Jews  he  has  baptized  during  that  time, 
but  a  fair  estimate,  based  upon  his  reports  in  his 
periodical.  The  Chosen  People,  would  bring  up 
the  total  number  of  Mr.  Cohn's  converts  to  about 
two  hundred.  But  where  are  those  two  hundred 
converts?  Can  Mr.  Cohn  give  the  names  of  only 
twenty  of  them  who  are  good  Christians?  Can 
he  name  leu?  Can  he  name  five?  Mr.  Cohn's 
converts  are  like  Jonah's  gourd,  "which  came  up 
in  a  night  and  perished  in  a  night."    Tliey  do  not 


174       A  Missionary- s  Return  to  Judaism 

stay  baptized.  Of  all  the  missionaries  in  the 
country  he  is  the  most  unscrupulous  both  in 
getting  a  convert  and  in  getting  rid  of  him. 

A  flagrant  example  of  his  utter  heartlessness 
Avas  brought  to  my  notice  a  few  years  ago.  A 
young  Hungarian  Jew,  a  recent  immigrant,  was 
baptized  by  him  after  an  acquaintance  of  only  a 
few  weeks.  His  picture,  with  that  of  two  other 
men  baptized  at  the  same  time,  was  published  in 
Mr.  Cohn's  monthly  magazine,  and  there  was  a 
great  deal  said  about  the  wonderful  conversion 
of  three  promising  young  Jews.  It  is  fair  to  as- 
sume that  this  picture  was  worth  thousands  of 
dollars  to  Mr.  Cohn.  And  yet,  when  this  young 
man  applied  to  him  for  assistance  a  week  after 
the  publication  of  his  picture,  Mr.  Cohn — so  the 
young  man  told  his  friends — gave  him  an  old 
straw  hat  and  half  a  dollar,  with  the  cool  advice 
not  to  bother  him  again. 

In  his  efforts  to  impress  Christian  people  with 
the  great  success  of  his  missionary  labors  and  to 
make  them  part  with  their  money,  he  uses  the 
usual  methods  employed  by  professional  con- 
verts, some  of  which  I  have  described  in  the  pre- 


A  Self-Styled  Ex-Rahhi  175 

ceding  chapters.  But,  as  may  be  expected,  he 
improves  upon  them  and  even  has  some  little 
tricks  of  his  own. 

A  rather  clever  and  mean  trick  attributed  to 
him  is  one  that  he  used  to  practice  at  social  en- 
tertainments given  at  his  mission.  After  the 
singing  was  done  and  the  refreshments  were 
served,  he  would  tell  his  Christian  friends  on  the 
platform  that  the  majority  of  the  people  gathered 
there  have  accepted  Christ,  as  a  proof  of  which 
he  would  call  upon  all  those  who  believe  in 
Christ  to  rise.  Then,  turning  to  the  audience,  he 
would  say  in  Yiddish  that  all  those  who  feel 
grateful  for  the  entertainment  should  express 
their  gratitude  by  rising.  Everybody  would  rise, 
of  course,  and  the  Christian  friends  were  deeply 
impressed  with  the  great  number  of  Jews  who 
have  accepted  Christ. 

But  the  truth  of  Abraham  Lincoln's  saying, 
"no  man  can  fool  all  the  people  all  the  time," 
is  also  vindicated  in  this  case,  as  appears  from 
the  following  letter  written  by  Rev.  Dr.  H.  L. 
Moorhouse,  Corresponding  Secretary  of  the 
American  Baptist  Home  Mission  Society,  located 


176       A  Missionary's  Return  to  Judaism 

in  New  York  City.  The  letter  was  addressed  to 
a  very  prominent  Christian  clergyman  and 
editor,  and  reads  as  follows : 

I  regret  to  say  that  I  have  quite  lost  confidence  in  Mr. 
Cohn,  and  the  Board  of  the  Home  Mission  Society  has 
discontinued  its  appropriation  to  his  work  in  Brooklyn, 
lie  has  alienated  some  of  his  best  sujiporters  by  his  re- 
fusal to  have  any  supervision  of  his  work  in  anj^  way 
whatever.  He  insists  upon  receiving  all  funds,  and  paying 
them  out  as  he  jjleases,  appointing  and  dismissing  ap- 
pointees at  his  pleasure,  and  determining  what  kind  of 
service  they  shall  render,  as  if  he  were  the  only  anointed 
one  of  the  Lord.  His  insulting  language,  and  his  bad 
temper  and  general  management  of  the  work,  have 
alienated  many  of  his  best  friends.  I  regret  to  be  obliged 
to  say  these  things,  but  I  cannot  advise  anybody  to  put 
money  into  the  enterprise  as  it  is  now  conducted. 

Lest  I  may  be  thought  to  have  a  personal  feel- 
ing against  Mr.  Cohn  I  want  to  state  that  I 
never  had  any  personal  dealings  with  him.  To 
the  best  of  my  recollection,  we  met  but  once, 
some  sixteen  years  ago,  at  dinner  in  the  house 
of  a  Christian  friend.  On  learning  that  he  was 
a  Hungarian  I  naturally  started  to  talk  about 
our  common  native  country,  but  he  was  very  reti- 
cent on   the  subject.       My  sole  motive  in  men- 


A  Self-styled  Ex-Rahhl  177 

tioiiiiig-  liiiii  by  uume  was  the  desire  to  let  the 
public  know  the  truth  about  him,  so  that  Chris- 
tian people  may  pause  and  reflect  before  giving 
further  aid  and  sympathy  to  this  self-styled 
ex-Rabbi,  who  makes  money  by  unmaking  men, 
who  buys  houses  by  telling  falsehoods  in  the 
house  of  Orod. 

Mr.  Leopold  Cohn  has  no  excuse  whatever  for 
continuing  in  his  career  of  sham  and  shame.  He 
has  accumulated  more  than  enough  to  live 
decently— —    Let  him  do  so ! 


CHAPTER  XIV 

THE    CPIURCH    AND   THE    JEW 

Could  we  Jews  see  ourselves  as  others — non- 
Jews — see  us,  we  should  either  get  too  bumptious 
or  lose  our  self-respect  altogether.  The  only  con- 
sistent element  in  the  judgment  of  the  Jews  by 
the  outside  world  seems  to  be  its  inconsistency. 
In  commenting  on  the  promise  made  to  Abraham, 
"I  will  multiply  thy  seed  as  the  stars  of  the 
heavens  and  as  the  sand  which  is  upon  the  sea- 
shore" (Gen.  22:17),  one  of  the  ancient  rabbis 
finely  remarked  that  it  was  the  fate  of  Abraham's 
descendants  to  be  either  lauded  to  the  skies  or 
trampled  upon  and  beaten  as  the  sand.  It  needs 
but  a  glance  to  show  that  this  is  still  true  at  th2 
present  time.  On  the  one  hand,  we  see  men  like 
the  late  Bishop  Potter,  who  never  missed  an  op- 
portunity to  express  his  love  and  admiration  for 
the  Jews;  on  the  other  hand,  there  exist  men  of 
the  Pastor  Stoecker  type,  who  delight  in  throw- 

179 


The  Church  and  the  Jew  170 

ing  mud  at  the  Jewish  race.  In  trying  to  find 
the  reason  for  such  a  divergence  of  opinion  con- 
cerning the  Jews,  we  shall  be  aided  by  keeping 
in  mind  that  this  same  fluctuation  between 
praise  and  blame  is  to  be  seen  in  the  New  Testa- 
ment itself.  For  instance,  the  Apostle  Paul,  or 
whosoever  used  his  name  (the  most  advanced 
scholars  deny  that  Paul  wrote  all  the  Epistles 
attributed  to  him),  speaks  of  the  Jews  in  this 
laudatory  way:  "Who  are  Israelites,  whose  is 
the  adoption  and  the  glory,  and  the  covenants 
and  the  giving  of  the  law  and  the  service  of  God, 
and  the  promises;  whose  are  the  fathers,  and  of 
whom  is  Christ  as  concerning  the  flesh?"  (Rom. 
9:24).  But  almost  in  the  same  breath  the  same 
writer  calls  them  "vessels  of  wrath  fitted  unto 
destruction"  (Rom.  9:22).  Other  passages  might 
be  cited  that  vacillate  between  high  commenda- 
tion and  strong  condemnation  of  the  Jews. 

Xow  it  is  a  matter  of  everyday  observation  that 
whenever  the  Bible  gives  a  contradictory  opinion 
on  any  debatable  question.  Christians  will  find  in 
its  pages  the  very  opinion  they  like  to  find,  and 
which  best  fits  in  with  their  moral  and  religious 


180       A  Missionary'^  Return  to  Jiidaistn 

natures;  therefore,  it  is  not  surprising  that  a 
Christian  of  a  finely  constituted  nature,  with  a 
highly  developed  sense  of  justice  and  humanity, 
will  shrink  from  applying  to  a  living  fellow-being 
the  harsh  words  and  bitter  reproaches  heaped 
upon  his  ancestors  in  the  remote  past.  Such 
a  nature  would  rather  listen  to  the  sweet  words 
spoken  in  the  Bible  concerning  Israel.  Inferior 
natures,  however,  will  conveniently  overlook 
these,  and  following  their  low  instinct  will 
eagerly  seize  upon  such  passages  in  the  Bible  as 
give  a  religious  sanction  to  their  hateful  words 
and  actions. 

If  individual  Christians  differ  in  their  attitude 
toward  the  Jews  according  to  their  natures,  the 
Church,  which  is  but  an  aggregate  of  individuals, 
must  vary,  too.  In  the  dark  ages  when  human 
nature  had  still  a  large  admixture  of  brute 
nature,  the  Church  condoned  and  not  infre- 
quently instigated  the  most  cruel  persecutions  of 
the  Jews.  In  Russia,  just  emerging  from  the 
medieval  state,  the  Church  is  still  at  her  old 
tricks. 

With  advancing  culture  and  civilization  the 


Thr  CJnirrh  and  the  Jew  181 

(Jliiurlfs  attitude  toward  tiio  Jew  changes,  lu 
Roman  Catholic  as  well  as  in  the  Protestant 
churches  the  progress  from  the  lower  to  the 
higher  estimate  of  the  Jew  is  everywhere  going 
on.  The  anti-Semitic  movement,  started  in  Ger- 
many some  thirty  years  ago  by  Court  Chaplain 
Stoecker  and  threatening  for  a  time  to  do  much 
mischief,  seems  to  have  spent  its  force,  although 
its  followers  make  as  much  noise  as  ever.  These 
will,  no  doubt,  hail  with  delight  the  latest  theory 
espoused  by  Professor  Haupt  of  Johns  Hopkins 
Universitv,  to  the  effect  that  Jesus  was  of  Arvan 
and  not  of  Semitic  descent.  If  this  could  be 
proven,  the  anti-Semitic  crowd  might  indulge  in 
denunciations  of  the  Semitic  race  to  their  heart's 
content  without  fear  that  in  so  doing  thev  cast 
a  slur  upon  their  own  Lord  and  Savior,  whom 
they  profess  to  love  and  worship.  But  even  if 
the  elimination  of  the  Jewish  element  from  the 
genealogy  of  Jesus  should  be  historically  cor- 
rect, there  w^ould  still  remain  enough  in  the  New 
Testament  that  tells  of  the  excellency  and  glory 
of  tlie  Jewish  race  to  act  as  a  restraint  upon 
anti-Semitic  outcries  and  to  shame  anti-Semites 
into  silence. 


182       A  Mu>ii<)nary's  Return  to  Judaism 

Comiiiiij  iioarer  home,  we  find  that  the  Ameri- 
can church,  or  more  strictly  speaking,  the 
American  churches,  since  there  is  fortunately  no 
one  church  officially  recognized  as  American, 
have  never  shown  any  hostility  to  the  Jews,  but, 
on  the  contrary,  have  frequently  put  themselves 
on  record  in  their  favor. 

As  a  rule  clergymen  of  all  Christian  denomina- 
tions speak  well  of  the  Jews  in  their  sermons  and 
public  utterances.  Even  during  the  great  ex- 
citement of  a  few  years  ago  in  New  York  City, 
when  the  question  of  Christmas  exercises  in  the 
public  schools  almost  caused  a  religious  panic, 
the  number  of  clergymen  who  voiced  anti-Jewish 
sentiments  was  very  small,  indeed.  Public  utter 
ances,  however,  are  not  always  an  index  to  true 
sentiments.  Preachers  as  well  as  ordinary  mor- 
tals will  sometimes  assume  an  attitude  for  the 
mere  effect.  Even  prayers  are  liable  to  be  only 
made  for  the  hearers  as  the  repoiter  naively 
wrote,  "The  Rev.  Dr.  A.  delivered  the  most  elo- 
quent prayer  ever  offered  to  a  Boston  audience." 
The  true  prevailing  sentiment  concerning  the 
Jews  among  church  people  can  be  gathered  only 


The  Church  and  the  Jew  183 

from  expressions  made  in  Christian  gatherings 
by  preachers  and  laymen  when  there  is  no  oc- 
casion for  striking  an  attitude.  The  writer  had 
such  opportunities,  and  the  result  of  his  observa- 
tions may  be  briefly  given  as  follows :  The  senti- 
ment concerning  the  Jew  that  exists  in  the  mind 
of  a  Christian  is  not  a  simple  one,  but  rather 
highly  complicated,  built  up  of  various  elements. 
There  are  several  factors  contradictory  in  their 
nature  that  enter  into  its  composition.  An 
analysis  of  the  sentiment  would  show  us  that 
there  is  for  each  factor  in  favor  of  the  Jews  an- 
other factor  counterbalancing  it.  The  train  of 
thought  arising  in  the  mind  of  a  Christian  when 
contemplating  the  Jew  may  be  somthing  like 
this :  "He  is  a  descendant  of  (he  great  race  of 
whom  Christ  came,"  but  ''the  Jews  killed  Him." 
"His  race  has  given  us  the  Holy  Scriptures,"  but 
"he  believes  only  in  the  Old  Testament  and  re- 
jects the  New."  "The  Jewish  Scriptures  have 
given  us  a  Christian  civilization,"  but  "the  Jews 
deny  Christ."  "The  Jews  have  shown  their  love 
for  this  country  on  many  occasions  by  patriotic 
sacrifices  of  life  and  property,"  but  "they  are 


184       A  Mhsionari/.H  Rcliini  to  Jiidai.siH 

clannish."      "The    Jews    are    sober    and    indus- 
trions,''  bnt  "they  are  getting  the  best  of  us." 

In  order  to  establish  an  equilibrium  between 
these  opposing  factors  in  favor  of  and  against  the 
Jews,  it  is  necessary'  for  Christians  to  be  guided 
by  the  principles  of  peace  and  good- will  to  all 
men  enjoined  by  the  Church  and  its  teachers. 
When  these  principles  are  not  firmly  rooted,  the 
equilibrium  is  likely  to  be  easily  disturbed,  and 
religious  fanaticism  will  sway  the  mind  of  the 
Christian  believer,  and  lead  him  on  to  violate 
the  most  sacred  obligations  of  humanity  in  the 
supposed  interest  of  religion,  and  the  result  is — 
Kishineif.  In  the  more  civilized  countries  there 
is  a  more  stable  equilibrium,  and  even  if  excite- 
ment runs  high,  it  vents  itself  in  denunciations 
against  the  Jews — the  result  is  anti-Semitic 
societies  and  social  ostracism.  But  where  an  en- 
lightened religion  has  overcome  the  traditional 
mode  of  thinking,  and  has  taken  firm  root  in  the 
hearts,  the  equilibrium  between  the  factors  is  so 
strong  that  nothing  will  ever  lead  the  Christian 
to  forget  the  man  in  the  Jew,  and  all  that  his 


The  Church  and  the  Jew  185 

religious  feeling  prompts  him  to  do  is  to  pray 
for  Lis  conversion. 

To  sum  up,  then,  the  attitude  of  a  semi-civilized 
Christian  toward  the  Jew  is  to  prey  upon  him; 
the  attitude  of  a  civilized  fanatic  is  to  bray  at  the 
Jew ;  that  of  a  fully  civilized  Christian  is  to  pray 
for  him.  The  future  Christian,  let  us  hope,  will 
simply  think  of  the  Jew  as  his  brother  man. 

In  the  onward  march  of  progress  and  enlight- 
enment the  Jew  will,  of  course,  leave  behind  him 
some  of  the  traits  of  character  that  have  been 
forced  upon  him  during  his  weary  pilgrimage  of 
centuries.  He  will  grow  in  physical  strength, 
and  will  thus  be  able  to  take  care  of  himself 
when  a  beardless  hoodlum  feels  inclined  to  pull 
his  beard;  he  will  also  give  up  his  patient  sub- 
mission to  injustice,  and  assert  and  defend  his 
rights  as  a  man  and  citizen  under  all  circum- 
stances; in  short,  he  will  give  the  lie  to  the 
aspersions  cast  upon  the  Jewish  race  by  the  ex- 
ample of  his  own  life.  Then  he  will  be  in  a 
position  to  answer,  as  the  celebrated  Berthold 
Auerbach  did  when  a  well-known  anti-Semite 
approached  him  at  a  public  banquet  and  said  to 


186      A  Mifislonary's  Return  to  Judaism 

him:  "Herr  Auerbacli,  here  is  to  your  health! 
I  don't  like  the  Jews,  but  if  all  the  Jews  were 
like  you  it  would  be  well."  "I  think,"  replied 
Auerbach,  laughingly,  "if  all  the  Christians  were 
like  me  it  would  be  well,  too." 

There  are  ringing  in  my  ears  King  David's 
words:  "Behold,  how  good  and  how  pleasant  it 
is  for  brethren  to  dwell  together  in  unity,"  and 
my  eyes  discern  in  the  not  far  distance  Jew 
and  Gentile  walking  arm  in  arm  in  the  sunlit 
path  of  love. 


CHAPTER  XV 

ANTI-MISSIONARY  MEASURES 

The  foregoing  chapters  contain  evidence  more 
than  enough  to  satisfy  every  unprejudiced  mind 
that  the  work  of  Jewish  missionaries  is  enveloped 
in  deceit  and  falsehood,  and  that  it  not  only 
bears  no  good  fruit,  but,  on  the  contrary,  is  a  con- 
stant menace  to  the  moral  and  religious  well- 
being  of  all  who  happen  to  come  under  its  in- 
fluence. 

But  while  I  hope  and  believe  that  my  testimony 
will  help  to  open  the  eyes  of  many  a  deluded 
friend  of  Jewish  missionaries,  and,  as  a  conse- 
quence, close  up  some  of  their  sources  of  supplies, 
I  am  not  optimistic  enough  to  think  that  an  en- 
tire cessation  of  Jewish  missionary  activity  can 
be  so  speedily  accomplished.  The  notice  in  pub- 
lic places  "Beware  of  Pickpockets"  helps  to 
diminish  but  does  not  abolish  the  business  of 

167 


188       A  MiHsionary's  Return  to  Judaism 

the  liglit-fiugered  gentry.  Even  if  the  majority 
of  enlightened  Christians  conld  l)e  made  to 
see  "the  error  of  their  ways,"  and  could  be  in- 
duced to  stop  supporting  a  work  so  full  of  sham 
and  pretence,  there  would  still  remain  a  certain 
class  of  people  with  large  means  and  small  brains, 
who,  in  spite  of  the  most  dismal  failures,  Aviil 
persist  in  experimenting  with  the  Gospel  upon 
the  Jews,  and  consequently  there  will  be  found 
worthless  individuals  who  will  lend  themselves 
to  the  experiment  and  encourage  their  financial 
backers  by  fictitious  results. 

But  right  here  some  reader  might  interrupt 
me  with  this  question :  If  the  activity  of  the  Jew- 
ish missionary  is  all  sham  and  pretence,  why 
should  Jews  bother  about  it?  If  some  Christians 
find  a  religious  satisfaction  in  having  the  Gospel 
preached  to  the  Jew,  why  not  let  them  have  it? 

To  this  I  reply :  The  main  mischief  done  by  the 
Jewish  missionaries  does  not  come  from  their 
successes  but  from  their  failures.  In  othei* 
words,  if  Jewish  missionaries  succeeded  in 
making  good  Christians  out  of  those  Jews  who 
come  within  the  sphere  of  their  influence,  they 


Aiiti-Missionurij  Measures  189 

would  be  less  objectionable  and  their  activities 
not  half  so  harmful.  Deplorable  as  would  be  the 
loss  of  any  number  of  Jews  to  Judaism,  there 
would  be  at  least  the  comforting  thought  that  the 
deserters  have  joined  a  religion  which  has  so 
many  excellent  features  in  common  with  Juda- 
ism. But  Jewish  missionaries  fail  to  make  good 
converts,  and  the  words  spoken  by  Jesus  might 
be  aptly  applied  to  them  :  "Woe  unto  you,  scribes 
and  Pharisees,  hypocrites!  for  ye  compass  sea 
and  land  to  make  one  proselyte;  and  when  he  is 
become  so,  ye  make  him  twofold  more  of  a  son 
of  hell  than  yourselves"  ( Matt.  23  :15. ) 
-^And  this  suggests  at  once  one  of  the  most  ef- 
fective weapons  against  the  activity  of  the  Jew 
ish  missionaries,  and  that  is  the  exposure  of  their 
double  life,  whenever  such  can  be  substantiated 
by  indisputable  evidence. 

Since  Jewish  missionaries  live  and  thrive  by 
money  obtained  under  the  mask  of  religion,  much 
will  be  gained  by  tearing  the  mask  off  their  faces, 
and  showing  their  real  character.  In  going  about 
this  it  is  well  to  remember  that  a  missionary's 
character  suffers  but  little  by  any  wrong  that  he 


190       A  Missionary's  Return  to  Judaism 

has  done  before  his  conversion.  The  pious  Chris- 
tians do  not  expect  one  who  is  unconverted  to 
lead  a  blameless  life,  and  they  are  only  too  will- 
ing to  throw  the  mantle  of  charity  over  such 
things  as  deserting  one's  wife  or  embezzling 
money  and  the  like.  I  know,  for  instance,  of  a 
very  successful  missionary  who  has  been  accused 
of  having  been  sentenced  in  his  native  country 
to  three  years  in  prison  for  the  crime  of  forgery, 
to  escape  which  sentence  he  fled  to  this  country. 
Yet  this  missionary  prospers  in  all  his  under- 
takings. The  most  effective  exposure  is  one 
which  shows  that  the  missionary  does  not  live  up 
to  the  high  standard  of  a  "man  of  God,"  as,  for 
instance,  when  it  can  be  proven  that  he  uses 
liquor  or  plays  cards  or  smokes.  A  habitual  in- 
dulgence in  such  things  would  surely  taboo  him 
with  most  of  his  spiritually-minded  admirers. 

And  since  most  of  the  Jewish  missionaries, 
having  formed  those  un-Christian  habits  in  early 
life,  continue  to  practice  them  on  the  sly,  it  would 
require  no  great  amount  of  detective  work  to 
expose  them  to  their  Christian  friends.  Such 
an  exposure  would  serve  the  double  purpose  of 


Anti-Missionary  Measures  191 

making  the  missionary  business  less  remunera- 
tive and  tlie  missionary  life  less  attractive. 

Sometimes  it  would  not  be  so  very  difficult  to 
procure  evidences  of  fraud  upon  which  the  post 
office  authorities  could  effectively  proceed.  There 
was,  for  instance,  a  well-known  Jewish  mission- 
ary working  in  New  York  City,  who  sent  out 
begging  letters  for  the  support  of  a  hat  factory, 
which  he  claimed  to  have  established  for  the  pur- 
pose of  giving  employment  to  his  converts,  who, 
having  accepted  Christ,  are  denied  employment 
by  the  Jews.  He  had  even  obtained  from  a  con- 
fiding pious  Scotch  maiden  lady  a  large  sum  as 
a  loan,  and  he  for  some  time  paid  dividends 
on  that  loan,  when  it  turned  out  by  evidence 
produced  in  court  that  the  hat  factory  had  never 
existed,  except  in  the  imagination  of  the  smooth 
missionary. 

But  we  could  well  afford  to  let  the  Jewish 
missionaries  alone  in  a  figurative  sense,  did  we 
take  good  care  to  let  them  alone  in  a  literal  sense. 
After  all,  the  most  effective  opposition  to  the 
Jewish  missionaries  will  prove  to  be  that  which 
aims  to  prevent  our  co-religionists  from  coming 


192      A  3Iissionari/'s  Return  to  Judaism 

in  touch  with  them.  As  their  work  is  being 
carried  on,  both  among  adults  and  children,  the 
efforts  must  be  directed  towards  keeping  them 
away  from  both  adults  and  children. 

Parents  should  be  cautioned  against  sending 
their  children  to  the  mission  schools.  It  should 
be  pointed  out  to  them  that  the  little  temporal 
advantage  derived  by  their  children  is  as  nothing 
compared  with  the  everlasting  injury  inflicted 
upon  them  by  attending  the  mission  schools. 
Wherever  possible  there  should  be  established 
schools  which  shall  offer  the  same  attractions 
that  are  offered  by  the  mission  schools,  so  that 
the  parents  should  have  neither  temptation  nor 
excuse  for  patronizing  mission  schools. 

As  for  preventing  grown-ups  from  falling  into 
the  missionarv  net,  it  would  seem  that  little  or 
nothing  can  be  done  in  the  matter.  In  fact,  there 
are  not  a  few  of  our  Jewish  brethren  who  think 
that  nothing  should  be  done.  If  anybody  wants 
to  leave  us,  they  argue,  let  him  go  and  good  rid- 
dance. But  even  those  who  express  this  view 
would  hardly  have  it  applied  in  practice.    We  are 


Anti-Missionary  Measures  193 

a  small  minority  in  Christian  lands,  and  can  ill 
afford  the  loss  of  any  members  by  desertion. 

Moreover,  this  laissez  faire  attitude  ignores 
the  duty  imposed  upon  the  strong  to  help  the 
weak.  We  should  never  let  a  brother  suffer 
from  lack  of  food  and  clothing  if  we  can  help  it. 
Are  we  to  refuse  help  to  a  brother  who  is  in  need 
of  mental  and  spiritual  advice?  The  late  General 
Booth  used  to  say  that  the  aim  of  the  Salvation 
Army  was  to  give  a  man  "soap,  soup,  and  salva- 
tion." We  are  so  very  generous  with  the  "soap 
and  soup,"  why  balk  at  salvation? 

Judaism  has  the  missionary  spirit,  though  it 
has  had  no  chance  to  develop  it  in  the  Golus. 
And  this  missionary  spirit  must  be  roused  for  the 
saving  of  children  and  weak  brothers  and  sisters 
from  the  missionary  pitfalls  and  snares.  But 
how  can  it  be  done?  Perhaps  l)y  keeping  in  mind 
the  ancient  maxim  similia  simillhus  curantur. 
Xo  city  with  a  large  Jewish  population  should 
be  without  provision  for  the  instruction  of  the 
young  men  who  are  wandering  about  like  sheep 
without  a  shepherd.  An  awaking  of  the  Jewish 
missionary  spirit  would  put  most,  if  not  all, 
Christian  missions  to  the  Jews  out  of  commission. 


CHAPTER  XVI 

AN   UNFINISHED  CHAPTER 

In  my  Boston  address  (see  Chap.  I)  I  said: 
"I  don't  know  where  I  shall  go  or  what  I  shall  do 
.  .  .  .  My  church  will  no  longer  fellowship 
with  me,  of  course,  and  perhaps  the  Jews  will  not. 
But  I  can  still  fellowship  with  the  dead  prophets 
and  martyrs."  I  was  quite  sure  that  the  true 
spirit  of  Judaism,  as  manifested  in  the  teachings 
and  lives  of  its  highest  and  best  exponents,  is 
not  so  harsh  and  unforgiving  as  its  Christian 
apologists  and  anti-Semitic  detractors  claim.  I 
was  not  so  sure,  however,  that  the  living  genera- 
tion of  Jews  is  still  animated  by  the  spirit  of 
mercy  and  forgiveness  for  the  weak  and  erring. 
My  experience  during  the  past  six  years  has  fully 
convinced  me  that  those  who  delight  in  speaking 
of  the  harshness  and  unforgiving  character  of 
the  Jew  are  absolutely  mistaken. 

Hence  I  venture  to  hope  that  this  chapter, 

194 


An  Unfinished  Chapter  195 

although  dealing  with  my  personal  affairs  after 
my  return  to  Judaism  and  to  private  life,  will 
not  be  considered  irrelevant  and  immaterial  al- 
together. 

But  inasmuch  as  it  covers  only  the  first  year 
of  my  restoration,  I  call  it  an  "Unfinished 
Chapter." 

I  intended  also  to  touch  in  this  chapter  upon 
some  of  the  present-day  Jewish  problems,  the 
right  solution  of  which,  is  so  necessary  to  the 
future  of  Judaism.  But  to  do  so  would  require 
more  than  a  chapter.  I  must  therefore  leave  this 
an  "Unfinished  Chapter,''  confining  myself  to  a 
narrative  of  the  events  which  culminated  in  the 
happiest  Seder-mght  in  my  storm-tossed  life. 

I  was  less  than  a  year  old,  counting  from  the 
time  that  I  had  started  on  the  new  life,  when 
Pesach,  the  grand  old  festival,  came  round,  and 
that  first  Seder  in  which  I  joined  again  as  a  loyal 
son  of  a  loyal  race  will  stand  out  in  the  chambers 
of  my  memory  as  the  happiest  Seder  of  my  life. 
Just  a  faint  idea  of  what  that  Seder  meant  to  me 
may  perhaps  be  best  conveyed  by  giving  a  brief 
account  of  the  unspeakable  misery  I  suffered  on 


196       A  Missionary's  Return  to  Judaism 

the  first  *S^e(7cr-less  Seder  ui<>lit  whicli  I  spent 
when  alienated  from   the   faith  of  my  fathers. 

Within  the  walls  of  the  Chicago  Theological 
Seminar}^,  where  I  lived  as  a  student,  the  ap- 
proaching Easter  festival — the  Christian  substi- 
tute for  the  Jewish  Passover — was  uppermost 
in  the  minds  of  all,  and  the  air  was  filled  with  the 
sufferings  and  crucifixion  of  Jesus,  for  which  the 
Jews — of  course,  only  the  ancient  ones — are  held 
responsible  according  to  the  New  Testament 
writers,  who  seemed  to  have  a  grudge  against 
the  Jews.  So  often  were  the  Jews  mentioned  in 
the  lessons  and  chapel  exercises  that  it  made  me 
nervous.  The  transition  from  the  ancient  to  the 
modern  Jews  is  so  natural  and  easy  that  I  was  in 
constant  fear  lest  the  harsh  names  given  the 
Jews  of  old  might  l>e  applied  to  their  living 
descendants.  But,  I  am  glad  to  state,  it  was 
never  done.  The  professors  and  students  of  the 
Seminary  were  absolutely  free  from  the  anti- 
Semitic  spirit  which  sometimes  claims  its  victims 
even  among  the  disciples  of  Jesus,  who  was  born 
a  Jew. 

On  the  other  hand^  when  walking  the  streets 


An  Unfinished  Chapter  197 

I  was  reminded  by  the  display  of  Matzah  signs  in 
the  stores  that  the  Passover,  a  festival  so  strong- 
ly linked  with  the  sweetest  memories  of  my  boy- 
hood, was  near  at  hand.  I  fell  ill.  The  doctor 
treated  me  for  spring  fever.  But  what  ailed  me 
was  the  fever  of  the  soul  in  conflict  with  itself. 

When  the  Seder  night  arrived,  I  stayed  in  my 
room,  seeking  forgetfulness  by  doing  my  Greek 
lesson.  But  it  was  of  no  avail.  I  felt  an  un- 
controllable desire  to  get  at  least  a  glimpse  of  the 
Seder  from  the  outside.  So  I  shut  my  book  with 
more  than  necessary  force,  hurried  down  stairs, 
and  took  the  car  for  the  Ghetto.  There  I 
wandered  about  in  the  deserted  streets,  looking 
wistfully  at  the  tenement  houses,  all  bright  with 
the  light  of  both  modern  gas  and  old-fashioned 
oil  lamps.  Now  and  then  I  would  steal  close  to 
a  half-opened  window,  only  to  get  a  glimpse  of 
the  Seder  table,  and  perchance  catch  a  strain  of 
the  old-time  melodies  so  familiar  to  me  from 
childhood.  In  my  highly  wrought-up  state  of 
mind  I  discovered  in  every  white-bearded  person 
sitting  at  the  head  of  the  table  a  likeness  to  my 


198      A  Missionary's  Return  to  Judaism 

beloved  father,  who  was  then  still  living,  in 
ignorance  of  my  change. 

Wine  could  never  affect  me  as  it  does  others, 
or  else  I  should  have  emptied  more  than  the  pre- 
scribed four  cups  that  night.  I  walked  about 
until  I  could  stand  it  no  longer.  Then  I  rushed 
back  to  my  room,  threw  myself  without  undress- 
ing on  my  bed,  and  merciful  sleep  gave  back  to 
me  all  that  I  had  lost.  In  my  dreams  I  was  a 
boy  again  at  my  father's  table. 

The  sad  remembrance  of  that  lonely  walk  in 
the  Ghetto  would  in  itself  have  suflSced  to  make 
this  first  Seder  night,  after  many  years  of  way- 
ward wanderings  in  the  Christian  wilderness, 
an  occasion  of  supreme  happiness  and  delight. 
But  there  were  additional  circumstances  that 
contributed  to  the  happiness  of  this  Seder  night. 

It  so  happened  that  just  about  springtime  there 
was  a  rift  in  the  clouds  of  poverty  and  want  that 
had  been  hanging  over  me  for  many  months. 
When  I  publicly  renounced  Christianity  the 
summer  before,  I  had  saved  up  only  a  small  sum, 
which  soon  melted  away.  All  efforts  to  find 
steady  employment  ended  in  failure.     Through 


An  Unfinished  Chapter  199 

some  friendly  influence  I  got  a  position  as  a 
porter  in  a  large  department  store.  At  the  end 
of  three  weeks  the  superintendent,  as  well  as 
myself,  were  fully  convinced  that  I  was  out  of 
place  in  the  company  of  young  and  sturdy  sons 
of  Erin.  It  took  less  than  a  week  of  peddling 
with  soup  greens  from  a  pushcart  to  impress 
me  with  the  truth  that  a  peddler,  like  a  poet,  is 
born,  not  made.  Then  I  fancied  that  with  a 
little  capital  I  could  make  a  living,  as  hundreds 
of  others  do,  by  attending  auctions  and  watch- 
ing for  bargains.  Accordingly,  the  Board  of 
Jewish  Ministers,  comprising  both  the  Orthodox 
and  the  Reform  Rabbis,  raised  a  little  loan  for 
me.  I  managed  to  buy  some  things  cheap,  but 
when  it  came  to  the  selling  of  them,  I  was  "sold," 
so  to  speak. 

After  this  dismal  failure  some  friends  thought 
of  sending  me  over  to  Ward's  Island,  the  hospital 
for  the  insane,  not  as  a  patient,  though,  but  as  an 
attendant.  When  I  went  over  to  apply  for  the 
position,  I  could  not  see  a  single  Jewish  face 
among  the  dozens  of  attendants  there,  and  the 
reason  for  this  was  quite  plain  to  me  when  I 


liOO       A  Misi^ionariys  Return  to  Judaism 

found  that  the  position  requires  a  minimum  of 
intelligence  and  a  maximum  of  physical  power 
and  courage  to  handle  the  unwieldy  and  at  times 
dangerous  patients.     I  declined. 

Afterwards  I  tried  the  various  free  employ- 
ment bureaus  supported  by  the  charitably  in- 
clined. Most  of  these  bureaus  do  lots  of  cack- 
ling but  hardly  ever  lay  an  egg,  justifying  their 
name,  if  not  their  existence,  by  giving  free  (and 
easy)  employment  to  their  own  office  help. 

Finally  I  settled  down  to  give  lessons  in  Eng- 
lish. The  proprietor  of  the  restaurant  which  I 
frequented  allowed  me  to  hang  up  a  cardboard  on 
which  was  this  legend  in  Hebrew  characters: 
"Lessons  in  English.  Inquire  here."  My  pupils 
were  mostly  young  workingmen  and  women  who 
were  ready  to  sacrifice  a  part  of  their  hard-earned 
wages  for  the  sake  of  satisfying  their  longing 
for  an  education.  Thirty  cents  is  about  the  aver- 
age pay  for  each  lesson,  and  usually  three  lessons 
a  week  is  all  that  a  pupil  can  afford  to  take.  I 
managed  to  fill  the  evenings  pretty  well,  and  my 
income  amounted  to  about  eight  dollars  a  week. 
The  trouble,  however,  was  that  sometimes  they 


An  Unfinished  Chapter  201 

had  to  work  overtime,  and  consequently  had  no 
time  for  the  lesson,  and  at  other  times  again 
work  was  "slack,"  and  they  had  plenty  of  time, 
but  no  money  to  pay  for  the  lessons. 

It  never  rains  but  it  pours.  In  addition  to 
teaching  there  was  opened  up  for  me  a  little 
source  of  income  from  occasional  contributions 
to  the  Hebrew  standard,  the  editor  of  which,  the 
late  Mr.  J.  P.  Solomon,  held  out  a  helping  hand 
to  me  and  encouraged  me  in  every  way.  I  gladly 
take  this  first  opportunity  to  pay  an  inadequate 
but  sincere  tribute  to  the  memory  of  this  good 
and  wise  man,  whose  mind  was  brimful  of  knowl- 
edge and  whose  heart  bubbled  over  with  kind- 
ness and  love. 

Just  about  the  time  this  favorable  turn  in  my 
affairs  was  taking  place,  the  Passover  arrived, 
and  I  found  myself  seated  at  the  Seder  table  pre- 
sided over  by  Rabbi  .  .  .  .  (I  am  almost 
tempted  to  break  my  resolution  not  to  mention 
in  this  book  the  names  of  living  persons,  either 
for  praise  or  blame.)  The  arrangements  at  the 
table  were  all  in  strict  accordance  with  the  old- 
time  traditions.    The  hostess,  although  born  and 


202       A  Missionary's  Return  to  Judaism 

bred  in  this  country,  had  everything  prepared 
just  as  her  mother  used  to  do,  allowing  not  a  jot 
or  tittle  to  be  left  out.  Her  conservative  nature 
made  her  also  keep  a  sharp  eye  on  her  husband, 
lest  he  omit  something  in  the  course  of  the  ser- 
vice. She  could  not  control  his  sermons,  but  as  for 
the  Seder  she  was  determined  to  make  him  walk 
the  straight  and  narrow  path,  and  he  had  sub- 
mitted to  her  will  in  this  point  for  thirty- 
six  years.  But  one  can  never  tell  when  a  tendency 
to  disregard  mere  forms  will  break  loose.  So 
when  the  point  of  the  service  was  reached  when, 
according  to  the  rubric,  one  should  lean  back  and 
drink  of  the  cup,  he,  instead,  leaned  over  towards 
me,  brought  his  glass  in  contact  with  mine,  and 
with  kindliness  beaming  in  his  eves  said: 
"Here's  to  your  happy  future!'' 

Insignificant  as  this  little  incident  may  appear, 
yet  it  made  me  supremely  happy,  by  removing 
the  last  vestige  of  doubt  concerning  the  Jewish 
attitude  toward  one  who  has  gone  astray. 

As  already  intimated,  our  Christian  friends 
persistently  claim  that  Judaism  is  a  religion  of 
hard,  unbending  laws,  while  Christianity  is  a 


An  Unfinished  Chapter  203 

religion  of  grace  and  love.  They  like  to  quote 
the  words  of  St.Paul:  "The  law  was  given  by 
Moses;  grace  and  truth  came  through  Jesus 
Christ." 

They  say,  Judaism  is  vindicative;  it  neither 
forgets  nor  forgives,  while  Christianity  teaches 
forgiveness  of  sins.  Whole  volumes  could  be 
w^ritten  to  refute  those  claims,  but  they  would 
contain  no  better  and  more  convincing  proofs 
than  that  given  by  my  host,  when  he,  a  disciple 
of  Moses  and  a  teacher  of  Israel,  graciously 
leaned  over  to  me  and  drank  to  my  health  on  that 
Seder-night. 


THE  END 


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